This company uses AI for all content creation, and the audience has run away.

This isn’t that AI doesn’t work. It’s that doing everything with AI has led to a dead end.

In March 2026, BuzzFeed released its financial report for the entire year of 2025.

The net loss for the year was $57.3 million, nearly 70% more than in 2024. Cumulative losses have reached $680 million.

The official report contained a sentence that is almost equivalent to a death sentence for itself:

“There is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

(There are significant doubts about the company’s ability to continue operating)

The stock price fell from a peak of $17 that year to just 70 cents now.

Three years ago, CEO Jonah Peretti announced “All in AI,” claiming to use AI to generate “personalized content” and to “improve efficiency.” Three years later, the financial report admitted: the money is almost gone, and the readers have also disappeared.

This isn’t that AI doesn’t work. It’s that—doing everything with AI has led to a dead end.

2023, All in AI

At the beginning of 2023, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti sent an internal letter to all employees, and the core message was simple: we must fully embrace AI.

As soon as the news broke, Wall Street rejoiced. The stock price surged over 120% that day—investors love to hear stories like, “AI + layoffs = profits.”

How long did the rise last? It fell back down in less than a month.

But Peretti didn’t hit the brakes. In April 2023, BuzzFeed laid off 15% of its staff and directly shut down its BuzzFeed News department. What was this department? It had just won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021, and was a team that had genuinely done in-depth investigative reporting.

It was shut down.

A month later, Peretti publicly added, “AI will replace most static content on the website.”

In plain terms: editors and reporters are too expensive, AI is cheap, so let’s switch.

At that time, many people thought this was a timely move, a way to “embrace technological change.” After all, ChatGPT had just become popular, who wouldn’t want to ride the wave?

But looking back now, this isn’t embracing change, this is selling the soul.

Vicious Cycle

What happened to BuzzFeed after cutting the editorial team?

First step: content quality declined.

Previously, humans wrote the content, editors would choose topics, verify facts, and add their own judgment and tone to the articles. Now everything is AI-generated—topic selection is templated, the writing is bland, and it reads like fill-in-the-blank answers.

A popular comment on Reddit stated: “3 years after switching to AI word slop, Buzzfeed is going out of business.” (Three years after using AI to write garbage content, BuzzFeed is going to close down.) Over 15,000 people liked it.

Second step: readers left.

The term “word slop” is particularly accurate—it captures that feeling of “something’s off, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Readers aren’t stupid; they can tell what has been thoughtfully written by a human and what has been churned out by a machine.

BuzzFeed’s traffic began to decline steadily.

Third step: revenue collapsed.

The drop in traffic directly impacted advertising revenue. In 2025, advertising revenue was nearly $3 million less than in 2024. Not much, but enough to make the already loss-making company struggle even more.

Fourth step: even less money to hire people.

With declining revenue, there was even less money to hire editors to improve content quality, creating a vicious cycle—cutting costs leads to worse content, worse content drives away readers, and as readers leave, revenue decreases.

A reader left a comment on Reddit that I believe perfectly summarizes this cycle:

“The readers know there’s no-one home.”

(The readers can tell that no one is here anymore.)

2026, Numbers Don’t Lie

Having said all this, what do the real numbers look like?

In 2025, the net loss for the entire year was $57.3 million, an increase of 68% from the $34 million loss in 2024. The stock price dropped from $3 three years ago to $0.70 now, a decline of 77%.

Cumulative losses have now reached $680 million.

What is most intriguing is the performance forecast for 2026—BuzzFeed itself doesn’t dare to provide one.

The sentence in the financial report can be summarized as: “We don’t know if we can survive until next year.”

This isn’t just one bad decision. This is the collapse of a whole narrative of “replacing humans with AI.”

AI is not the soul

So where did BuzzFeed go wrong?

AI can help you write faster, but it cannot replace the “person behind the screen.”

BuzzFeed’s mistake wasn’t using AI—it was using AI to eliminate that person.

The correct approach has never been “AI replaces humans,” but rather “AI enhances humans.” Humans make judgments, AI executes. Humans write with soul, AI writes length.

What does this mean for us?

BuzzFeed has fallen, but the tuition it paid is worth remembering.

First, content is not just “information.”

Information can be quantified, but trust cannot. Readers are not buying those two thousand words; they are buying the belief that “the person who wrote this article is worth my five minutes.”

Second, AI is a lever, not a substitute.

Using AI to help you research, polish, or come up with headlines—that’s leverage. But letting AI make topic decisions for you, express your stance, or build relationships with readers—that’s a recipe for disaster.

Third, the cost of “efficiency” may be underestimated.

Peretti thought laying off 15% of staff would save money, but he didn’t account for the loss of readers, the collapse of trust, and the devaluation of the brand. Short-term financial reports look good, but the long-term foundation is rotten.

BuzzFeed may struggle for a while longer, as the financial report states it is “exploring strategic options,” including the possibility of selling itself or being acquired.

But it has given everyone a lesson:

You can use AI to do anything, but don’t use AI to replace your value as a human being.

Readers are not here to read content; readers are here to “feel another person’s presence.”

Without that person, no matter how good the content is, it’s just an empty shell.