Workforce automation is about to cost dozens of news contractors their jobs. The Seattle Times and The Guardian report that Microsoft is letting go of dozens of news contractors (about 50 in the US, 27 in the UK) after June 30th due to a shift to AI news production on MSN. The workers were responsible for choosing, editing and curating stories. People employed full-time by Microsoft will stay at the company.

In a statement to the Times, Microsoft said it “evaluate[s] our business on a regular basis” like most companies and that this could involve “re-deployment.” It stressed that the contractor job cuts were “not the result of the current pandemic.”

It’s not certain how many people were affected, or where the largest group of victims was. Some of them were likely in the European Union, though, as Microsoft is offering contact info for its data protection officer. Enterprise customers also weren’t involved. The tech firm’s email offerings include everything from modern Outlook.com accounts through to legacy Hotmail and MSN addresses.

This is unlikely to be as far-reaching as the breach that touched on more than 772 million email addresses, but it’s still a substantial violation of privacy. The attackers could theoretically use this not just for spam, but to piece together details of users’ personal lives and rely on that for fraud and identity theft.