Meta moves 7,000 workers into AI roles ahead of job cuts

NEW YORK - Meta Platforms is reassigning 7,000 workers to new jobs related to artificial intelligence, according to an internal memo, as part of a broad corporate restructuring that includes planned staff reductions later this week.

Employees will move into one of several new groups focused on AI-related products, including agents and apps, according to the memo on May 18 from chief people officer Janelle Gale, which was reviewed by Bloomberg.

The new corporate structure will be “flatter” and means “smaller teams”, Ms Gale wrote.

“We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding,” she added.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the social media company’s top priority, redirecting teams and resources to focus more closely on the burgeoning technology. The push to improve AI has become central to Meta’s consumer products and Mr Zuckerberg’s corporate vision.

Meta is spending hundreds of billions on the talent and infrastructure needed to develop large language models that power chatbots and other consumer features, part of an effort to compete with rivals like Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI.

Meta has also encouraged engineers to use AI agents to help with coding and other tasks, and Mr Zuckerberg is even developing an AI-powered version of himself to interact with employees.

Meta previously told staff that it will cut 10 per cent of workers on May 20 – or roughly 8,000 people – as part of an effort to improve efficiency and “offset” its other investments in AI. Headcount at the social media giant was 77,986 employees at the end of March, according to company filings.

Employees in North America were encouraged to work from home on May 20, the memo said.

Meta has also closed an additional 6,000 open roles as part of the process.

New initiatives where Ms Gale said employees were being transferred – or “drafted”, as many staff members refer to it – include Applied AI Engineering (AAI) and Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN, two teams previously announced by chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth as part of Meta’s “AI for Work” efforts.

Both are aimed at developing AI agents that can autonomously carry out tasks currently performed by human staff.

Central Analytics, also a destination for transfer, was likewise mentioned in Mr Bosworth’s earlier announcement and would aim to measure productivity and analytics for agent development.

Details on another new initiative called Enterprise Solutions would be shared soon, Ms Gale said.

The changes have prompted a revolt from Meta employees, who have been protesting against the moves with fliers at the company’s offices and in angry posts on its internal communications platform, Workplace.

More than 1,000 employees have signed a petition decrying the installation of mouse-tracking software for use in training Meta’s artificial intelligence models to help them replicate how humans interact with computers.

Others have been openly tangling with company leaders, criticising executives for dismissing privacy concerns about the mouse-tracking tech and for staying silent about layoff plans for more than a month after Reuters first reported them.

During that month, many employees took to responding to executives’ posts on Workplace with pictures of elephants, imploring them to address the layoffs, the so-called elephant in the room, according to examples seen by Reuters. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS