Meta has announced major job cuts across its artificial intelligence division and its risk review organisation. The company said these changes are aimed at improving speed and efficiency as it builds new AI products.
Alexandr Wang, Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at Meta, shared a message with employees confirming that 600 people from the AI division would be laid off. He said the reduction in staff would help the company make faster decisions. “By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision,” he wrote in an internal memo.
Alongside these layoffs, more than 100 employees from the risk review organisation were also let go. This team is responsible for checking Meta products to ensure they follow global privacy rules and meet requirements set by the Federal Trade Commission.
Meta Chief Privacy Officer Michel Protti informed staff that the risk team would be reduced and most manual checks would now be handled by automated systems. “By moving from bespoke, manual reviews to a more consistent and automated process, we have been able to deliver more accurate and reliable compliance outcomes across Meta,” Protti said. He added that the company will keep working on innovation while meeting regulatory responsibilities.
Sources described this change as a major loss for the team that reviews privacy and safety risks. Many of the affected employees are based in London.
A company spokesperson said that Meta regularly reviews its structure and will keep high compliance standards while moving faster on development.
These decisions follow three years of company wide restructuring led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as Meta competes more aggressively in the AI space with rivals such as OpenAI.
The risk organisation was created after the Federal Trade Commission imposed a record fine in 2019 and required Meta to strengthen accountability around user data. Current and former staff members expressed concern that automated systems may not be enough to manage privacy risks that need careful human oversight.
The layoffs also impacted parts of the FAIR research team including senior researchers who worked on Meta AI models. However, TBD Labs, a division working on advanced AI and led by Wang, did not face cuts.
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