Microsoft’s move to fire its human news division and lean into the use of artificial intelligence for its news services is apparently continuing to yield utterly disastrous results. MSN—Microsoft’s news aggregation site—hosted and then deleted an obituary for former NBA player Brandon Hunter that sported the headline “Brandon Hunter useless at 42.” Hunter passed away earlier this week. The entirety of the obit is filled with AI-generated gibberish. “Throughout his NBA profession, he performed in 67 video games over two seasons and achieved a career-high of 17 factors in a recreation in opposition to the Milwaukee Bucks in 2004,” one paragraph reads. The article has since been pulled from the site, but archives show the AI-driven nonsense that was briefly pushed seemingly as real news on Microsoft’s site by the publication “Race Track.” MSN reportedly fired all 27 of its journalists in 2020, replacing them with “artificial intelligence software,” The Guardian reported at the time.
