German media giant Axel Springer is laying off 20 per cent of newsroom jobs and apparently replacing some employees with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, reports surfaced on Thursday.
Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner, a friend of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has ushered in a “digital-only” phase, reports CNN.
The roles of editors, photo editors, proofreaders and other employees involved in print production will “no longer exist as they do today,” the publisher wrote in its memo.
The layoffs will majorly impact Bild, among the most widely sold newspapers in Europe.
Axel Springer owns several multimedia news brands such as German news publications Bild and Welt, and US news sites Politico and much of Insider.
Axel Springer told employees it would “unfortunately be parting ways with colleagues who have tasks that in the digital world are performed by AI and/or automated processes,” according to German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ).
The job cuts will reportedly impact nearly 200 of 1,000 employees at Bild.
A Bild spokesperson, however, told CNN that the job cuts weren’t related to AI, but “AI would be a time-saving and useful tool for editors and reporters”.
In a recent memo to employees, Dopfner said that “artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was — or simply replace it.”
“Understanding this change is essential to a publishing house’s future viability. Only those who create the best original content will survive,” he added.
He further wrote in the staff memo that “AI will soon be able to completely take over the layout of the printed newspaper”.
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