Last month, a large number of Microsoft employees were laid off after the company announced its decision to replace its editors with AI in the editing of articles on MSN.
However, it seems that this decision got her into trouble, since a mistake was made in one of the articles.
The AI software's job is to collect news articles from various publications and attach an image to them. In an article about the racism experienced by Little Mix musician Jade Thirlwall, it added a photo of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, who is also a member of Little Mix.
Thirlwall soon expressed her anger via Instagram:
“@MSN when you copy-paste articles from other reputable media outlets, you might want to make sure you use the photo of the correct group member.”
As The Guardian, the wrong photo was added by AI software.
All of this comes at a time when anti-racism protests are growing around the world following the death of George Floyd.
At this time, such mistakes that can offend people of different races may have a negative impact on Microsoft.
While we can blame AI for its inefficiency, The Verge pointed out that possible mislabeling of images provided by services could be one of the reasons behind the incident. However, it cannot be ignored that it failed to distinguish between two mixed-race members of the same band.
A Microsoft spokesperson said: "As soon as we became aware of this issue, we acted immediately and replaced the incorrect image."
Meanwhile, other journalists working for MSN have been told to monitor the articles published by the AI. They are advised to delete such stories that are automatically published by the software.
However, there is a high chance that the editor will override their actions and try to republish the story, so employees should keep an eye on it.
Let's hope that the AI system will manage to improve over time and will not repeat similar mistakes.
