As if the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t enough of a nightmare for workers around the world, now Artificial intelligence has started taking over people’s jobs.

Amid several industries being affected by the influx of automation, journalism, it turns out, is not an exception. Microsoft recently decided to fire dozens of its journalists responsible for selecting, curating and editing articles for the MSN website, with plans to replace them with automated systems that shall select news stories. At a time when Indian news media companies are laying off employees left, right, and centre due the Covid-related economic downfall, the possibility of robots affecting our job security further is a chilling thought. Turns out all those Hollywood movies not only predicted calamities such as the pandemic, the locust attack and multiple climate change fiascos, but also robots rendering humans redundant.

But it’s worth acknowledging that as of now AI isn’t taking away the jobs of reporters, but of those responsible for selecting and arranging the news. But who knows when the robots might be able match the grit and instinct of reporters, too?

What if this article was written by a robot? Who will the editors blame if something is factually incorrect? Will Solicitor General Tushar Mehta call the news bots ‘vultures’ then?

Artificial Intelligence is still in its early stages. But it will be interesting to see how it will change the fourth pillar of democracy, especially in an era of clickbait web journalism and shouting matches on Prime Time TV news. Will hysterical anchors in newsrooms be replaced by robots who’ll talk with some sanity?

Or with pre-decided templates and algorithms, making them another agenda-fulfilling tool? Looks can be deceptive — take China’s first AI news presenters “Xin Xiaomeng“, who sports a short haircut, a pink blouse and earrings, and “Xin Xiaohao” who wears a sharp suit and charismatically presents the news like any other news presenter.