MSN replaced journalists with AI publishing fake news about mermaids and Bigfoot

Earlier this month, we reported that the Microsoft-operated news site MSN had run a clearly bogus story claiming that Claire "Grimes" Boucher had publicly called out ex-boyfriend Elon Musk on Twitter for not paying child support. The tweet the story based its claims off was an obvious fabrication, but that didn't stop the Inquisitr from publishing it, or MSN from distributing it to a much wider audience. It turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg in MSN's sloppy propagation of patently fake news. In particular, recent years have seen Microsoft embrace an increasingly callous and cynical strategy toward the site: in 2020 it gutted MSN by firing dozens of workers, including journalists, editors, and other production staff, vowing to replace them with automated systems instead. "I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am," one fired MSN staffer told The Guardian at the time. MSN makes lofty promises that there's still "Human oversight" over the stories it syndicates, but given the desultory deluge of fake nonsense it appears to run constantly, it seems very unlikely that the site's remaining skeleton crew is accomplishing much at all. MSN isn't just popular; it's the default source of news for many Windows users. Open a new tab on Microsoft's Edge browser and it lands you on an MSN hub.