{"slug": "meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles", "title": "Meta reverses decision to reassign employees to AI training roles", "summary": "Meta is reversing its decision to reassign 7,000 employees to AI-focused units, including the Applied AI taskforce, allowing individuals to choose whether to join. The move comes amid low employee morale following layoffs and other AI-related policy changes. Meta emphasized that the taskforce remains a key priority but deferred to employee choice.", "body_md": "[Meta](https://www.fastcompany.com/section/meta) is reversing its decision to reassign 7,000 employees to different [AI](https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence)-focused units, like the Applied AI (AAI) taskforce to help train the company’s models, one month after those plans were announced.\n\nAccording to an internal memo obtained by [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lets-engineers-leave-ai-training-unit-after-mass-reassignment-2026-6), Meta explained that it would now “defer to each individual’s choice” about whether or not they want to join the taskforce. The email was sent to employees who had been “drafted” to the AAI taskforce, Business Insider reported.\n\n“As I emphasized before, personal agency will remain at the heart of all opportunities at Meta: we will support employees in whatever decisions they make,” the memo said. “Of course, we’d prefer everyone to stay and push to SOTA (state of the art) together, but we defer to each individual’s choice.”\n\n“For any transition, we’ll partner tightly across teams to minimize disruption,” said part of the memo, shared with *Fast Company *from sources close to the company. “We’re sharing for transparency, and don’t mean this to be taken as saying AAI’s work to advance the models is any less critical.”\n\nThe memo also said that the taskforce “remains a key priority for this company, alongside other core priority work at Meta.”\n\nMeta declined *Fast Company’*s request for comment.\n\nThe decision could be part of Meta’s broader initiative to boost employee morale.\n\nIn May, Meta [laid off 10%](https://www.fastcompany.com/91545576/heres-how-meta-is-justifying-its-layoffs-to-thousands-of-employees) of its workforce. Just this week, the company paused [tracking employee keystrokes](https://www.fastcompany.com/91563851/meta-hits-pause-on-tracking-employee-keystrokes-to-train-ai-after-internal-leak) to train its AI models after an internal leak. Earlier this month, the company’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said that [employee morale](https://www.fastcompany.com/91562037/meta-cto-company-morale-is-probably-one-of-the-worst-its-ever-been-after-layoffs) was “probably one of the worst it’s ever been.”\n\nOther companies have also walked back on their AI policies for employees. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn backtracked on the company’s [“AI-first” policy](https://www.fastcompany.com/91527377/duolingo-was-evaluating-its-workers-ai-use-workers-pushed-back) and reversed requirements to evaluate employees based on their AI use. This week, Amazon [shut down](https://www.fastcompany.com/91555955/most-businesses-are-measuring-ai-wrong-and-its-costing-them-ai-tokens-strategy) its AI leaderboard tracking employee token usage, telling staffers not to use AI “just for the sake of using AI.”\n\nSome companies are also placing limitations on how employees use AI tools. Uber [capped](https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/uber-blew-through-2026-ai-budget-in-four-months-now-it-is-capping-employee-use/91355199) its employees’ monthly AI spend and [Microsoft canceled](https://www.fastcompany.com/91552523/new-internal-microsoft-memo-shows-shifting-employee-sentiment) its Claude Code licenses in part to mitigate spend. Some companies across varying sectors have also recently rehired positions they eliminated due to AI, sparking a trend called the [“AI boomerang.”](https://www.fastcompany.com/91554983/ai-boomerang-why-some-companies-are-rehiring-employees-they-laid-off)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles", "canonical_source": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91565257/meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles", "published_at": "2026-06-25 20:15:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 20:47:10.743407+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Meta", "Applied AI", "Business Insider", "Fast Company", "Andrew Bosworth", "Duolingo", "Luis von Ahn", "Amazon"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/meta-reverses-decision-to-reassign-employees-to-ai-training-roles.jsonld"}}