Reuters reports that Meta’s plan to replace human work with AI agents faltered as layoffs, redeployments and weak productivity gains fueled resistance.
Meta’s plan to reshape its workforce around artificial intelligence unraveled after employees resisted proposed layoffs and internal data showed weak productivity gains from AI agents, Reuters reported.
Project OT envisioned AI taking over much of the daily work done by thousands of employees, with smaller groups of human workers overseeing virtual agents.
Executives considered cutting some teams by as much as 60% in two waves. Meta laid off 10% of its workforce in May but canceled a second round of cuts planned for November.
Employees believed the company’s AI transformation could replace them, while changes to Meta’s codebase expanded faster than features reaching users. The company also faced questions about the security and reliability of automated work.
Meta confirmed Project OT as a year-long effort focused on cost cutting, team redesign and moving staff into priority areas such as AI training data. It said the most extreme scenarios did not represent plans to cut 60% of the entire workforce.
Meta declined to make CEO Mark Zuckerberg available for comment, and Reuters said the company’s current workforce plans remain unclear.
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