BuzzFeed decided to further experiment with the use ofartificial intelligence to create content, producing travel guides generated by the AI robot “Buzzy”. These articles aim to attract traffic to websites. And there are currently 44 posts covering different destinations such as Morocco, Stockholm and Cape May in New Jersey. Even though the articles were written with Buzzy’s help, they were fueled by human ideas.
BuzzFeed, travel guides are written by AI
The top of every travel item includes a note that the article was co-written by a human and Buzzy. However, as Futurism noted (in an article all written by a human), there are some common phrases used in many of the articles. Like “now, I know what you’re thinking” before a rhetorical question about the specific place. Or the frequent use of the phrase “hidden gem”.
Note the writers involved in creating these articles they were not members of the BuzzFeed editorial staff. Instead, they were instead company sales staff. According to the BuzzFeed spokeswoman, the company’s AI tools used responses to a travel questionnaire provided by these non-editorial employees to create the articles, which were then reviewed by a human editor.
Although the company is “testing new formats to allow anyone to contribute their unique ideas and perspectives to the site,” travel guides generated by artificial intelligence are not yet able to provide detailed information for planning a trip. At the moment the quality seems substandard. But let’s assume that over time, the bot will be able to do better.
BuzzFeed’s experiment with AI for content creation follows its January announcement that it would used OpenAI tools to personalize content. Instead, unlike BuzzFeed, CNET has stopped using artificial intelligence for creating stories soon after it is unearthed.