Microsoft has decided to lay off its journalist employees and instead rely on the technology of Artificial Intelligence to generate news stories which can be published in the homepages of Edge Browser and MSN website.
The decision of replacing its journos with robotic tech was expected since Jan this year and might have been delayed due to the Corona Virus spread from Feb this year.
According to news report published in ‘The Guardian’ Microsoft has cut off its ties with The Press Association and so will axe its 27 member freelance news writers from early next month.
Already, the decision of the tech giant was conveyed to the news generating staff of PA last week as they were told that their services of generating news stories were no longer required as AI can easily do that job.
Highly placed sources say that Microsoft will use robotic intelligence to edit, select and curate news articles on its MSN homepage and will favor only automated updates in its news stories.
We all know that automation and AI have the capability of stealing jobs from humans and Microsoft has proved it right redefining the usage of AI in generating news stories on its MSN website.
Note 1- A source from ‘The Guardian’ said that the journalists’ team from PA never reported original stories and used their editorial tools to post consolidated news content generated by other news organizations and used to share ad revenue with the original publishers of the news content. Now, all this process will be done by AI which will first sieve untrustworthy stories which encourage communal, political and religious bias. Other companies like Google might also follow the same job suite.
Note 2- However, those who analyze the job market say that only the jobs of editors might fall into jeopardy by the adoption of AI. As those indulging in field work of generating original news content might feel safe as the manual reporting can only be done by Humans or with Human intelligence & interference.
