Asked why Microsoft was deploying software that cannot tell mixed-race individuals apart, whether apparent racist bias could seep into deployments of the company's artificial intelligence software by leading corporations, and whether the company would reconsider plans to replace the human editors with robots, a spokesman for the tech company said: "As soon as we became aware of this issue, we immediately took action to resolve it and have replaced the incorrect image."

Microsoft's decision to replace human journalists with robots has backfired, after the tech company's artificial intelligence software illustrated a news story about racism with a photo of the wrong mixed-race member of the band Little Mix. A week after the Guardian revealed plans to fire the human editors who run MSN.com and replace them with Microsoft's artificial intelligence code, an early rollout of the software resulted in a story about the singer Jade Thirlwall's personal reflections on racism being illustrated with a picture of her fellow band member Leigh-Anne Pinnock. Thirlwall, who attended a recent Black Lives Matter protest in London, criticised MSN on Friday, saying she was sick of "ignorant" media making such mistakes. She posted on Instagram: "@MSN If you're going to copy and paste articles from other accurate media outlets, you might want to make sure you're using an image of the correct mixed race member of the group." "This shit happens to @leighannepinnock and I ALL THE TIME that it's become a running joke," she said.