Microsoft's AI news editor which replaced human journalists already made a mistake

A new article on MSN featured the wrong Little Mix member's photo which is said to have been the work of AI.

Microsoft reportedly sacked journalists last month and replaced them with robots. (REUTERS)

Microsoft last month replaced human editors with AI for its news aggregator MSN. Turns out that this plan has already backfired as the AI news editor placed the wrong member's photo from the British girl band Little Mix for an article on racism.

Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall talked about her personal experience on racism in a podcast which was later picked up by news outlets. MSN also published the news piece but instead of Thirlwall's photo on the story it's AI editor published the photo of another member Leigh-Anne Pinnock, the Guardian reported.

Thirlwall took to Instagram to criticise MSN for using the wrong member's image. “@MSN If you're going to copy and paste articles from other accurate media outlets, you might want to make sure you're using an image of the correct mixed race member of the group,” Thirlwall wrote on her Instagram story.

“This shit happens to @leighannepinnock and I ALL THE TIME that it's become a running joke ... It offends me that you couldn't differentiate the two women of colour out of four members of a group … DO BETTER!” she added.

Microsoft did not confirm that it was indeed its AI's mistake of using the wrong photo for that news article. The company had reportedly laid off around 50 journalists last month in the US and the UK. These employees were news editors responsible to pick and curate news pieces from other publications.

It seems plausible that the AI would have made such a mistake of picking out the wrong image. But for it to happen shortly after Microsoft replacing human journalists with AI says a lot about how the technology is still not qualified enough. And it's less likely for such a mistake to occur with a human editor.