The Closure of BuzzFeed News

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I think we're seeing the end of New York that really began in the early aughts. There was this sense of this kind of dynamic new New York scene where, you know, culture was being made and money was being made. I remember in like 2012, or maybe 2013, there were these sort of signs that there was this huge surge in traffic coming from social media. And eventually it turned out that was from Facebook.

A song featuring A.I.-generated versions of Drake and the Weeknd went viral — before being taken down by streaming services. Is censorship of A.I.-generated songs the way forward? Or can singers benefit from synthetic voices, as some artists like Grimes are suggesting?

Then, HatGPT: Kevin and Casey pull headlines out of a hat and generate their own takes on the news.

And Ben Smith, the former BuzzFeed News editor, discusses the end of the 2010s digital media era.

On today’s episode:

Ben Smith is a journalist and co-founder of the digital media company Semafor. He was a New York Times media columnist and the first editor in chief of BuzzFeed News.

Additional reading:

An A.I.-generated song made to sound like Drake and the Weeknd went viral before being taken down by streaming services.
Grimes invited fans to make songs using A.I.-generated versions of her voice.
Snapchat saw a spike in one-star reviews after users criticized its “My AI” feature.
Taylor Swift did not invest in FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange company.
Researchers turned a goldfish into a cyborg.
The Republican National Committee released an A.I.-generated ad slamming President Biden.
The U.K. blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion bid for the video game company Activision.
Ben Smith’s book, “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral,” is an origin story of digital media.
A BuzzFeed article set off a viral debate on the color of a dress.