MSN fires its human journalists and replaces them with AI that starts spreading fake news about mermaids and Bigfoot

Earlier this month, we reported that the news site run by Microsoft MSN He had posted a fake story claiming that Claire “Grimes” Boucher had publicly called out her ex-boyfriend Elon Musk on Twitter for not paying child support. The tweet the story based her allegations on was an obvious slander, but that didn’t stop detective who published it, or MSN from distributing it to a much wider audience.

It turns out that this was just the tip of the iceberg MSNDirty promotion of obviously false news.

Take its affinity for for example, a supernatural and conspiracy news site publishing tales of cryptids, signs of Atlantis, and magical crystals. Here are some newly – and obviously preposterous – ones: for example Articles that MSN Gathered for its wide readership:

– “Fishermen catch mermaid creatures in their nets”

– “Bigfoot movie woman jumps from tree in California”

– “The party is interrupted with a giant UFO flying right over it”

– “Mars rover appears to capture ‘dark beast’ wandering on Mars”

– “Someone swore they caught a biblically accurate angel floating in the sky above Los Angeles”

Needless to say, if any of these stories were even remotely credible, they would completely upend the scientific establishment. Instead, the source of each of these juicy titles is always a grainy, unconvincing video that does nothing to convince us that mermaids, bigfoot, angels, or aliens are real.

While Examples addresses on MSN are grossly absurd, and others, like Grimes’ story, are more sly in their plausibility. quick check for MSN The comments section within the Grimes-Musk case shows that many readers were easily fooled.

The future has arrived MSN For commenting on both Grimes’ story and many more for example stories and received no response. At the time of publication, all hoax articles are still live MSNSite.

Really for examplegarbage clickbait run right? Sure, and its readers may enjoy commenting on their disbelief, like readers of the supermarket tabloids of decades past. Belief in the Bigfoot is not entirely harmful, though it likely indicates a weaker-than-average understanding of reality.

But there is no excuse for that MSNAnd the A media giant with Microsoft’s extraordinary resources behind it, Amplify – and monetize – this ridiculous and inaccurate content. Its audience is vast, with analytics service Likeweb estimating that it attracts nearly 1 billion readers per month.

In addition to, MSN It has massive SEO power that pushes its content to the top of the search results, many times replacing the original post. If by chance a reader happens to search Google for something that looks like one MSN’s Many fake addresses, the search engine will return MSN’s Reposting a story with the original sometimes omitted, lending it undue credibility.

Many in this massive audience will see false and false stories for example, The detective and other lower level publishers along with other legitimate outlets promoted by MSNSuch as bloombergAnd the New York timesAnd the The Daily Beast. The effect, inevitably, undermines the good work done by hardworking and ethical publishers, rewards nonsense spread by low-quality content farms, and undermines public faith in science and tech journalism.

as such, MSNThe seemingly non-existent editorial standards illustrate the perils of the contemporary media industry. In particular, recent years have seen Microsoft adopt an increasingly harsh and cynical strategy towards location: in 2020, for example, it destroyed MSN By firing dozens of workers, including reporters, editors, and other production staff, vowing to replace them with automated systems instead.

Someone fired MSN said the employee Watchman in time. “AI has taken over my job.”

This anonymous employee sent an informed warning: Although the human team has used careful editorial guidelines to screen material that appeared on MSNIn their website, the new automated system will likely struggle to achieve the same level of nuance and skepticism.

MSN He makes lofty promises that there will still be “human oversight” of the stories the site publishes, but given the massive deluge of fictitious nonsense he seems to be running constantly, it seems unlikely the site’s remaining skeletal crew will ever accomplish much.

And with a dwindling human staff, there are fewer left to hear readers’ concerns, effectively erecting a brick wall of troubling ambiguity. Comment requests go unanswered, and MSN More fake stories are being published all the time.

Microsoft’s ultimate goal, it seems, was to automate its news distribution system, while cutting costs in the process. To this end, Microsoft may have succeeded, but in the process poisoned the well of general news reading.

That would be alarming in any widely read news aggregator. But MSN is not just popular; It is the default source of news for many Windows users. Open a new tab on Microsoft Edge browser and it will direct you to a file MSN The main center. And if for some reason you are still using Internet Explorer, MSN is the default home page for that too. Hell, even the Windows Start Menu will show you its articles. It even ties into competitors’ systems, capturing countless new views on Google News.

Briefly? It’s another cautionary tale about corporations’ growing hunger to empty decision-making of flawed AI systems that eliminate important jobs, exercise poor judgment with little oversight, and generally make society worse for the humans still living in it.

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