Red Ventures Goes All-In on AI, CEO Tells Staff in Company-Wide Meeting

Compiled by the editorial desk with reference to official statements, company announcements, and industry reporting.

Red Ventures, the parent company of CNET and Bankrate, is moving aggressively to integrate generative AI into its core operations, according to audio from a company-wide meeting obtained by Futurism. CEO Ric Elias told employees on Thursday that the company is entering a new era where AI will be central to its business model, not just a side experiment.

“Today is day one of AI in our company,” Elias said during the all-hands meeting. “Today is the day that we will look back on, hopefully five to ten years from now, and realize that this was not just an opportunity for us to open up a new revenue source or our new business source, but to truly reinvent everything we do as a company.”

Elias framed the shift as a positive transformation, telling staff that “AI will change everything, and I believe, for the most part, in a good way.” The meeting took place on the same day that Futurism reported Bankrate had quietly resumed publishing AI-generated articles, despite earlier incidents where such content was found to contain factual errors.

Bankrate’s latest AI-written story included a disclosure stating that a human editor had fact-checked the content, but the text still contained inaccuracies. The article was removed after Futurism reached out with questions. This follows a pattern of AI-related missteps at Red Ventures-owned sites, which have faced criticism over the reliability of automated content.

The announcement also comes just weeks after CNET employees moved to unionize, citing concerns that “automated technology” threatens their jobs and reputations. A union representative told Futurism at the time that media workers are “looking into how to address AI in relation to plagiarism, liability and the impact to the workforce.”

During the meeting, Elias and other leaders emphasized productivity as a key driver for adopting AI, a rationale echoed by other media companies such as BuzzFeed, Insider, and G/O Media Group. Insider’s editor-in-chief, Nich Carlson, described tools like ChatGPT as the “new bicycle of the mind,” referencing Steve Jobs’ famous quote about the iPhone. The argument is that AI can speed up content production, allowing writers to focus on higher-level tasks and ultimately attract more readers.

“I think our brands, I think our editorial, I think our writing is going to be at a premium,” Elias told staffers. “We’re not just writing content to write content. We’re writing content because we stand for something, we’re trying to help consumers in certain journeys… editorial is really very much part of what makes us unique.” He added, “That said, we’re going to use tools to make our editors and our writers more productive.”

However, the push for speed has raised concerns about quality and accuracy. AI-generated content has been shown to produce convincing but fabricated information and phony citations, and some critics argue that the pursuit of productivity can lead to plagiarism of human work.

Beyond Editorial: Data and Hyper-Personalization

Red Ventures’ AI ambitions extend beyond editorial content. The company operates a large commerce business across its consumer advice websites, and Elias highlighted the potential for AI to leverage proprietary data for hyper-personalized advertising, similar to plans announced by BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.

“We have a huge competitive advantage,” Elias said. “We have our own proprietary datasets… we have the ability to go learn on our own assets, and then show up somewhere and say, ‘here’s the data model that has been proven to work. Here are digital journeys that have been perfected.'” He added, “Hyper-personalization really was at the core of what we have tried to do all along. I think finally, that vision will be able to come together.”

In a statement to Futurism, Red Ventures emphasized its commitment to privacy and ethical AI use. “The future is AI,” the company said. “We believe it will impact every facet of modern work and help humans do uniquely human work better. We’re embracing it — we are upskilling our teams, we’re exploring how it can help us better serve our customers and partners — but we’re committed to doing it the right way.” The statement added that AI use will vary across the company’s portfolio, but that privacy and ethical considerations will remain constant.

Despite the assurances, the long-term impact on Red Ventures’ brands and workforce remains unclear. Elias’ message to employees was unequivocal: “I believe that AI will unlock all the different constraints that we’ve had in our business models today. From here on out, we are not going to think about AI — we are going to become AI.”