Microsoft to replace journalists with AI
Microsoft plants to replace dozens of its MSN contract journalists with automated systems, US and UK media report.
In a statement, the US tech giant said "Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic."
MSN, like most other tech companies, pays news organizations to use their content on its website. But it employs journalists to decide which stories to display and how they are presented.
Currently, the curation of stories along with selection of headlines and pictures are done by journalists. However, artificial intelligence is set to perform these news production task in the future.
Around 50 contract news producers set to lose their jobs at the end of June, but a team of full-time journalists will remain.
Microsoft said this is part of an evaluation of its business.
It should be noted that the attempt to replace human journalist with machines in nothing new. Xinhua –a Chinese news agency– has been experimenting with virtual news presenters since 2018.
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