Microsoft announced it won’t be renewing the contracts of roughly 50 news production contractors working at MSN. The firm said these positions will be replaced by artificial intelligence, reported The Seattle Times. The curating of stories from news organisations and selection of headlines and pictures for the MSN site is currently done by journalists. The latest The Berry Vrbanovic Daily! https://t.co/2EZtatKq5L #microsoft #ai — Berry Vrbanovic (@berryonline) May 31, 2020 Microsoft said it was part of an evaluation of its business. The US tech giant said in a statement: “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.” Microsoft, like some other tech companies, pays news organisations to use their content on its website. But it employs journalists to decide which stories to display and how they are presented. Robots will replace journalists – at Microsoft. Artificial Intelligence – is it really a human friend or foe ? https://t.co/jQXOm93w5p — Gharidah Farooqi (@GFarooqi) May 31, 2020 Around 50 contract news producers will lose their jobs at the end of June, the Seattle Times reports, but a team of full-time journalists will remain. One staff member who has been made redundant told The Guardian: “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.” The individual also warned that replacing journalists with software was risky. Human workers can stick to “very strict editorial guidelines” which guarantee that viewers are not presented with inappropriate content. This is especially of concern when dealing with young viewers. Artificial intelligence may not be able to recognize particularly violent or distasteful content.