The Technology section is powered by Favbet Tech
Microsoft will pay the media startup an undisclosed but “significant” amount of money to sponsor a news feed called “Signals,” according to the Financial Times.
Signals will offer a feed of breaking news and analysis of big stories with a dozen posts per day. The goal is to provide “different perspectives on events from around the world,” a key focus of startup Semafor since its launch in 2022.
Microsoft also plans to announce collaborations with other journalism organizations in the near future – namely, the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, the Online News Association, and the GroundTruth Project.
Earlier, the corporation and its sponsored startup OpenAI faced a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from The New York Times website, which accused the company of using its articles for free to train chatbots with artificial intelligence.
Gina Chua, executive editor of Semafor, has been involved in the development of research AI tools for a media startup powered by Microsoft’s ChatGPT and Bing.
“Journalism has always used technology, whether it’s carrier pigeons, the telegraph or something else… there’s a set of tools now that are a real breakthrough in the industry,” says Chua.
With the help of AI, Semafor journalists will search for reports and comments in several languages from other sources around the world to create breaking news — we are talking about Chinese, Indian or even Russian (!) media in particular.
“Journalists must adopt these tools to survive and thrive,” said Noreen Gillespie, a former Associated Press reporter who joined Microsoft three months ago to build relationships with news companies.
Media startup Semafor was founded by former BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith and ex-Bloomberg Media executive Justin Smith, and is backed by high-net-worth individuals including 3G capital founder Jorge Paulo Cleman and KKR co-founder Henry Kravis. In 2023, the company generated over $10 million in revenue and has over 500,000 subscriptions to its free newsletter. The founders say Semafor was “very close to profitability” in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s efforts to automate the News Feed have not always been successful. For example, in 2020, the corporation tried to replace the editors of the Microsoft News and MSN services with artificial intelligence — as a result, the system confused two singers of mixed race; or even earlier examples with the chatbots Tay and Zo – the first fell in love with Hitler and hated feminists overnight, and the second called Windows spyware and promoted Linux. Recently, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence “enhanced” The Guardian’s article about the death of a woman… with a survey about the probable cause of death.
The Technology section is powered by Favbet Tech
Favbet Tech is an IT company with 100% Ukrainian DNA, which creates perfect services for iGaming and Betting using advanced technologies and provides access to them. Favbet Tech develops innovative software through a complex multi-component platform capable of withstanding huge loads and creating a unique experience for players. The IT company is part of the FAVBET group of companies.
