--- title: "BuzzFeed AI Struggles to Recommend Recipe for Laid-Off Journalists" description: "Behold: Botatouille, business genius and BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti's new recipe-suggesting chatbot. Just one issue..." date: "2023-05-25" modified: "2023-05-25" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/buzzfeed-ai-recipe-laid-off-journalists" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai" - "buzzfeed" - "journalism" - "the digest" --- # BuzzFeed AI Struggles to Recommend Recipe for Laid-Off Journalists ![Behold: Botatouille, business genius and BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti's new recipe-suggesting chatbot. Just one issue...]() *Vegetarian or vegan Italian pasta in tomato sauce. Cooking and serving vegan dishes at home, in a cafe or restaurant. Spaghetti with sliced vegetables, in a beautiful plate, on the dining table. Vegetable food. Sustainable development. Ethical consumption \Image: Getty Images\* Fresh on the heels of announcing that he would be [using AI to replace static content]() — and thus, re-engineer *BuzzFeed*-owned sites into a new kind of automated content farm — *BuzzFeed* CEO Jonah Peretti [has given *The New York Times*]() a glimpse into what that process might look like. Behold: Botatouille, a recipe-suggesting chatbot that will soon be integrated into the *BuzzFeed-*owned food site *Tasty*. "Rainy day? Botatouille recommends winter chili or lentil soup," writes the *NYT's* Benjamin Mullins. "Feeling lonely? Botatouille suggests chocolate chip cookies or a vegetable curry. Botatouille might also recommend shepherd's pie, which it quipped was its mother's recipe." We know, we know. Groundbreaking stuff. We'll give you a second to pick your jaw up off the floor. But for all its recipe-generating prowess — it apparently excelled at offering a coherent party punch — Botatouille reportedly struggled with one specific recipe ask: a good meal suggestion for a laid-off media worker. That's a relevant question for the bot, considering that *BuzzFeed* just sacked its entire *BuzzFeed News* team in favor of an AI-heavy future for the digital media empire. "Hmm, it seems like you might be feeling a bit down. How about I recommend a meal that will lift your spirits?" Botatouille reportedly told Mullins, after first hitting the journalist with an "oops, something went wrong" error message. "For a laid-off digital media worker, I suggest trying the one-pan chicken and veggie meal prep 2 ways." You heard the bot. If your CEO, like a growing number of others, has prioritized AI tech over human creativity and salaries, some chicken and veggie meal prep oughta do the trick. Armed with Botatouille, Peretti unsurprisingly took his chat with the *NYT* as an opportunity to defend his fixation on AI not as the prioritization of cost-cutting machines over humans labor, but rather as a simple means of staying on top of the latest technology fads. "Shifting from a sort of crumbling wave of social to a growing wave of generative AI, to me, is an exciting transition," Peretti told the *NYT*. "And I think there's things we could definitely learn to make sure we capture more enduring value from a technological trend." Peretti also assured the *NYT* he's definitely not an evil CEO attempting to replace *all* journalists with AI, thanks for asking! "Even if you were, like, an evil CEO trying to replace all journalists with AI, you would be very unsuccessful," said the CEO. "It wouldn't work on the business side." In other words, from a business perspective, you can't replace all media workers with robots. But you can, apparently, replace some of them, whose contributions to both value and traffic can be replaced by a recipe bot that will let you in on its mom's favorite recipe. (That line is particularly infuriating when you consider that Botatouille may have churned out a spin on someone *else's* recipe, be it from their mother's kitchen or hours spent recipe testing.) This whole thing is LinkedIn AI Guy depressing, although considering some of Peretti's other recent comments, it's also not terribly surprising. At the company's recent Investor Day, where he announced that *BuzzFeed* would move to kill a massive chunk of static content, he also emphasized that moving forward, *BuzzFeed* would prioritize "fun" and "entertainment" — which, sandwiched between words like "interactive" and "gamified," seem to translate to "distraction" — over all else. Botatouille is likely just the tip of that iceberg, though whether it'll actually make a monetization splash remains to be seen. "The biggest platforms will increasingly be defined by how much fun they provide users," Peretti told *BuzzFeed* investors. "As a result, the only profitable sustainable businesses that can be built on top of the big platforms will be focused on entertainment." "This is why we shifted the *BuzzFeed* brand away from news," he added, "to focus on making the Internet more fun." **More on BuzzFeed AI:** [*BuzzFeed Is Quietly Publishing Whole AI-Generated Articles, Not Just Quizzes*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()