Microsoft pulls travel article recommending Ottawa Food Bank as tourist attraction
Posted Aug 18, 2023 01:47:18 PM.
An article that included the Ottawa Food Bank as one of the capital’s biggest attractions has been pulled from Microsoft’s website.
The article on MSN.com included 15 recommendations of places for tourists to visit in the capital. Coming in at number three was the “beautiful” Ottawa Food Bank.
“Life is already difficult enough,” the article said, encouraging tourists to visit the food bank. “Consider going into it on an empty stomach.”
The article also contained multiple errors, it referred to the seat of government as “Parliament Hills” and said tourists at Winterlude would get to experience “North America’s largest snow.” It showed a photo of the Rideau River when referring to the Rideau Canal, with a photo of the Rideau Canal on the listicle’s entry for Parc Omega, which it called “Omega Park.”
The article was removed from the website Thursday afternoon, after CityNews Ottawa contacted Microsoft for comment.
“This article has been removed and we are investigating how it made it through our review process,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CityNews Ottawa by e-mail.
In a statement to CityNews Ottawa, Microsoft said an investigation into the matter has been completed, adding that the issue has been identified as a “human error.”
“The article was not published by an unsupervised AI,” the statement from a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We combine the power of technology with the experience of content editors to surface stories. In this case, the content was generated through a combination of algorithmic techniques with human review, not a large language model or AI system. We are working to ensure this type of content isn’t posted in future.”
Microsoft cut dozens of journalism and editorial jobs at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations, in 2020, as part of a push toward using artificial intelligence to pick news and content for MSN.com and Microsoft apps.
