Microsoft Lays Off News Editors

Microsoft is automating part of its news service. The company laid off about 50 U.S. editors and news staffers, Business Insider reported Friday, and 27 U.K. contractors, The Guardian reported Saturday.

• As of two years ago, Microsoft News had over 800 editors in 50 locations around the world.

AI will partially take over the news curation tasks. “I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am—AI has taken my job,” one staffer told The Guardian.

Automation in news aggregation and curation has accelerated over the last decade. But delegating language and sentiment analysis to algorithms can be a risky move, as Microsoft learned with its Tay AI chatbot in 2016. Other services, from Facebook’s mobile app to HBO streaming apps, emphasize human oversight in media/news curation.

Zoom out: Don’t want social media algorithms to serve you the news? Rest assured, the Brew’s curation is algorithm-free.