Gen AI's Empty Calories; WaPo Subs Pay What The Algorithm Says | AdExchanger

"Food-related imagery can be tricky to generate. After all, everybody knows what a cookie is supposed to look like and can tell when it falls into the uncanny valley. What the article does not go into, on the other hand, is the cost to produce all this content. At a certain point, maybe just taking a photograph of a cookie will be cheaper again."

"Their problems are less about their business now and more about the overhang of a whole era in which investors and executives imagined a totally different cost structure for media that never materialized. The last few years have been bumpy dealing with legacy commitments from a previous era of media."

"Instacart loudly announced in December that it had stopped a test for algorithmic pricing (what it termed 'item price tests') after being called out by Consumer Reports, which had multiple consumers order the same bag of groceries for surprisingly disparate prices."

Major food and beverage brands including Coca-Cola, Svedka, and Chips Ahoy! are adopting AI-generated video content, though quality issues and negative consumer reactions persist. Food imagery presents particular challenges for AI generation, as consumers easily detect unrealistic results. Additionally, the cost-benefit analysis of AI content production versus traditional photography remains unclear. Separately, media companies face significant challenges from legacy business models. BuzzFeed's decline stems from unsustainable cost structures established during the venture capital era, when companies hired aggressively to meet advertising demand. Similar struggles affect other publishing platforms. BuzzFeed's attempt to recover through AI content generation has shown limited success, reflecting broader industry difficulties in adapting to current market conditions.

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