BuzzFeed will begin writing articles using OpenAI

[wickiwick]

Summary

BuzzFeed announced they will be using OpenAI’s API to generate articles. This news caused their stock to soar from $1.29 at opening to a high of $2.88. They closed the day at $2.09, a 119% increase.

 

Quotes

Quote

The stock was 19% higher in extended trading, after more than doubling in value earlier in the day as a Wall Street Journal report said it would use ChatGPT creator OpenAI for its content.

 

My thoughts

With BuzzFeed’s simple articles and interest topics, this is probably a home run scenario for them. This is the cheapest way for them to make new content. It’s really unfortunate that many of their writers will be out of the job.
 

It’s also possible that BuzzFeed may be shooting themselves in the foot a bit. Legal eagle just posted a video talking about copyright in terms of an AI assistant. right now it’s legally unclear whether an AI can create a copyrighted work, so it’s possible that BuzzFeed will have articles that cannot be copyrighted. Since AI is using other peoples work as a model for its own, it’s also unclear if it’s a copyright violation for them to use existing works to write new ones. 

 

Sources

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/battered-buzzfeed-shares-rally-after-report-multi-million-dollar-meta-deal-2023-01-26/

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, wickiwick said:

It’s also possible that BuzzFeed may be shooting themselves in the foot a bit. Legal eagle just posted a video talking about copyright in terms of an AI assistant. right now it’s legally unclear whether an AI can create a copyrighted work, so it’s possible that BuzzFeed will have articles that cannot be copyrighted. Since AI is using other peoples work as a model for its own, it’s also unclear if it’s a copyright violation for them to use existing works to write new ones. 

I don't think this is an issue. News articles are already heavily copied by websites anyway, and Buzzfeed is large enough that people will visit their article over some other random website that may or may not copy their articles.

 

I am surprised that Buzzfeed haven't done this earlier. There are plenty of sites that have been doing it for ages, not just CNET which apparently have done it for over a year and people only started noticing it recently.

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, wickiwick said:

right now it’s legally unclear whether an AI can create a copyrighted work, so it’s possible that BuzzFeed will have articles that cannot be copyrighted.

And then what? Sites like buzzfeed live or die by SEO optimization and constant article spam, someone reposting the same article later is kind of irrelevant. Use of AI generation is a further admission that the content of the articles is extremely low effort and likely copied in part from other sources to begin with. There are a lot of sites which not only do this already, but will generate "articles" on the fly based on your google search prompt so they show up in the first results. It's what's made google search dramatically worse in the past few years.

4 hours ago, wickiwick said:

Since AI is using other peoples work as a model for its own, it’s also unclear if it’s a copyright violation for them to use existing works to write new ones. 

This is a misunderstanding of how the tech works. No article from the training set is being meaningfully copied by the AI, nor does it have any specific "memory" of that article; what's being "learned" is the style and format of a generic article, not its content.

[mr moose]

In other news, politicians said to start using aI to better craft lies and excuses for their failures.

 

If nothing changes but how the articles are written then who cares?  I'm more interested in finding a way to stop the internet from amplifying outright lies and propaganda.

[Needfuldoer]

7 Ways ChatGPT is DISRUPTING the Clickbait Industry! (You WON'T BELIEVE #4!)

[suicidalfranco]

Eh, it's BuzzFeed. Do you really need to employ someone to write about what animals brad Pitt's dongle looks like?

If anything it's benefit, less urinalists writing complete garbage in the world.

[Fasterthannothing]

Honestly and this isn't to sound callus or cruel but writers will be few and far between in just a few years. Most of what we consumer is garbage and reproducible by and AI system anyway.

[Taf the Ghost]

The articles are already primarily rewritten by algos. Headlines & content points have been set by trend analysis of SEO for a while on any of the content farm. All they're doing is basically adding an interposing text generator to cut out the middle man. 

 

Writing quality will probably improve, haha.

[Doobeedoo]

Ah yes MGS AI thing where so much junk data being produced.

[StDragon]

It's been stated that by 2030 over 90+% of all online content will be generated by ChatGPT, dubbed the "information apocalypse". At this rate I believe it; from articles, art, music, and complex procedurally-generated worlds and assets for next generation gaming content.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, StDragon said:

It's been stated that by 2030 over 90+% of all online content will be generated by ChatGPT, dubbed the "information apocalypse". At this rate I believe it; from articles, art, music, and complex procedurally-generated worlds and assets for next generation gaming content.

Considering how much of traffic is already bot-based, at some level it'll be bots reading AI generated text. And there'll be no money in it. 

 

What will happen is human-generated content will run at a premium, but the vast majority of the current filler content will simply cease to exist. It was only produced because systems are still designed with the "must fill column inches" assumptions of the newspaper age.

[StDragon]

38 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Considering how much of traffic is already bot-based, at some level it'll be bots reading AI generated text. And there'll be no money in it. 

 

What will happen is human-generated content will run at a premium, but the vast majority of the current filler content will simply cease to exist. It was only produced because systems are still designed with the "must fill column inches" assumptions of the newspaper age.

Given the level of disinformation poisoning going on by various actors (nation states, activists, revolutionaries, anarchists, etc), AI will incorporate this information and feed it to other AI. The internet will become such a blended mess of fact and fiction that it will become difficult to delineate which is which in the generations to follow.

Remember, AI isn't self-ware. What AI produces is based on what we feed it. Give it garbage, you get garbage back out; just packaged differently. Unfortunately it will be used as an agent in information warfare to cause further discord and confusion.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

Given the level of disinformation poisoning going on by various actors (nation states, activists, revolutionaries, anarchists, etc), AI will incorporate this information and feed it to other AI. The internet will become such a blended mess of fact and fiction that it will become difficult to delineate which is which in the generations to follow.

Remember, AI isn't self-ware. What AI produces is based on what we feed it. Give it garbage, you get garbage back out; just packaged differently. Unfortunately it will be used as an agent in information warfare to cause further discord and confusion.

We all know what happens when you give the AI access to the Internet. The consistency of it taking on the most radical of positions isn't surprising. 

 

Which is exactly why hand-made, which used to be everything, has become associated with higher quality. The price of "good content" will go up; the value to the producers will go up; far less will be made because "good enough" can be mass created.

 

It gets really wild when the AI Generator p**n hits. 

[Daft_Vader]

It was going to be either AI or cigarette smoking monkys which were going to replace the writers. The articles from Buzzfeed may actually be better now.

[ouroesa]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:05 PM, Needfuldoer said:

7 Ways ChatGPT is DISRUPTING the Clickbait Industry! (You WON'T BELIEVE #4!)

Watch till then END!!!!

[Guest]

Was mad libs with Twitter posts too expensive? 

[Kamina]

They just refuse the die.