Microsoft is temporarily discontinuing AI-generated polls next to news articles

Microsoft has temporarily stopped AI-generated polls next to news articles. This happened after the British newspaper The Guardian complained about a misplaced poll next to a news article about a dead young woman.

No poll should have appeared next to such a news article and that is why Microsoft is investigating why this happened anyway. the company said in a statement to The Verge. The poll appeared on Microsoft Start and prompted readers to consider the cause of the young woman’s death. The Guardian wrote to Microsoft that the poll had caused reputational damage to its brand and to the journalist who wrote the article.

The poll did have a label ‘Insights from AI’, but it was nevertheless not clear to every reader that Microsoft had added the poll with the help of artificial intelligence. The Guardian advocates that Microsoft provide advance insight into how it presents articles from the medium online.

Article with poll about which The Guardian complained to Microsoft, October 2023