Microsoft fires about 50 production workers from its news site, significantly cutting costs • "It's terrible to think robots can replace us," said one employee

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Microsoft fires dozens of production workers on the MSN portal, replacing them with bots. The company said it would not renew its employment contract for about 50 employees in the UK. Already on Wednesday, those employees announced that their services would no longer be needed beyond June 30. 

Thus, the company will actually save a lot of costs, as the use of bots is quite cost effective. "Like all companies, we value our business on a regular basis," a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement. "These decisions are not the result of the Corona crisis."

As mentioned, the company will use bots and algorithms to identify news stories and stories while helping to optimize content, write headlines and add images. "It's awful to think that robots can replace us .. And here it happens," one employee said.

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MSN has undergone several changes since 1995. In the past, the site offered original content on news, weather and sports. In 2014, Microsoft launched a new version without source content, which is based on collaborations with other news sites while paying them to redistribute their content.

Today the news service relies entirely on these partnerships with no original news content of its own, so the company could rely more and more on an automated editorial system, and now without any human involvement.