While thousands of Meta employees were informed about job cuts earlier this year, another group of nearly 7,000 workers received a very different message. According to an internal memo reviewed by Business Insider, these employees were selected to join Meta’s expanding artificial intelligence teams as the company accelerates its AI ambitions.
The memo informed employees that they had been chosen based on their performance and technical capabilities. One of the emails stated, “This is a reflection of your impact.” Employees were also told, “You were identified as someone who can make a real impact on this team,” with the company citing their “strong performance” and technical expertise as key reasons for the reassignment.
Meta Expands Newly Created AI Teams
The workforce shift is part of a broader restructuring effort that places artificial intelligence at the centre of Meta’s long-term strategy. Employees have been reassigned across several newly established AI-focused groups, including Applied AI, which is led by Engineering Vice President Maher Saba and reports to Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth.
Other employees have been moved into teams dedicated to AI agent development and model improvement, including Agent Transformation Accelerator and Agent Data and Optimisation. The internal changes reflect Meta’s efforts to accelerate the development of AI-powered products and services across its platforms.
The company has already introduced a number of AI-focused organisational changes in recent months. These include creating a superintelligence lab, restructuring teams into smaller, AI-driven units, and changing some employees’ job titles to “AI builder.”
Employees Describe The Process As An ‘AI Draft’
The reassignment initiative has sparked conversations across Meta’s internal communication channels, with some employees informally referring to the process as an “AI draft.”
“I got drafted,” one employee wrote on an internal forum, according to Business Insider.
Another employee replied, “Welcome to the draft.”
While several workers reportedly viewed the move as a positive opportunity amid layoffs, others expressed uncertainty about the nature of their new responsibilities. Employees who spoke to Business Insider indicated that participation in the reassignment process appeared to be mandatory rather than optional.
Some workers speculated that the new teams could be tasked with supporting AI model training and data-related operations, including image tagging, evaluating AI outputs, and correcting chatbot responses to improve model performance.
Meta Explores Using Employees To Help Train AI Models
The initiative aligns with the background of Meta’s Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, who previously founded Scale AI, a company known for providing data-labelling services used to train artificial intelligence systems.
Meta has also introduced internal programmes to advance its AI capabilities. Earlier this year, the company launched the Model Capability Initiative, a project designed to capture how employees interact with computers so that AI systems can learn from real-world workflows and decision-making processes.
An internal post introducing the initiative stated, “For agents to understand how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers, we need to train our models on real examples.”
The company’s broader vision for employee participation in AI development was also discussed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an internal meeting. In a leaked recording, Zuckerberg highlighted Wang’s experience in the data-labelling industry and suggested that leveraging Meta’s workforce to train AI models could offer a strategic advantage.
“I think that this is going to be a very big advantage if we can do it,” Zuckerberg said, while noting that the concept remains a hypothesis rather than a proven approach.
