In its Microsoft News and MSN organisations, Microsoft is laying down dozens of journalists and publishing houses. The layoffs are part of Microsoft's larger push for the selection of news and content from artificial intelligence in MSN.com, the Microsofts Edge browser and the different Microsoft News apps of the company. Many of the workers affected are part of the SANE division in Microsoft (search, ads, news, edge) and are contracted to help select stories as human editors.
"We periodically evaluate our business," says a spokesperson for Microsoft in a statement. "It can lead to increased investment at some places and redeployment at other places from time to time.
The present pandemic does not result in these decisions.
While Microsoft says dismissals are not directly related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, worldwide media companies are severely hit by TV, press, online, and more advertisement revenues.
On Friday, the company insider reported layoffs and said there were approximately 50 jobs in America. The job losses in Microsoft News also affect international teams, and The Guardian reports that some 27 have been dropped in the United Kingdom after Microsoft had decided to stop using people to curate papers on its homepage.
For more than 25 years, Microsoft has been involved in the news business since it launched MSN in 1995. Microsoft revealed it had "more than 800 editors from 50 different locations worldwidely at the time of Microsoft News' launch almost two years ago."
Microsoft has progressively moved to AI in recent months, encouraging publications as well as journalists to use AI for their Microsoft News work. Microsoft used AI to scan the contents, process and filter them, and even propose photos to be coupled with by human editors. Microsoft had used human editors to curate top stories on Microsoft news, MSN and Microsoft Edge from a number of sources.
