What’s happening inside Meta’s AI division? Employees say morale is at rock bottom

Meta Platforms is facing growing employee unrest inside its artificial intelligence organisation, according to a report by WIRED, as workers describe falling morale, unpopular role changes and increasing frustration following the company's AI-focused restructuring.

The concerns come at a pivotal moment for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has made artificial intelligence the company's top strategic priority and invested heavily in efforts to compete with rivals including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

According to WIRED, tensions inside the company became visible during an employee-only livestream earlier this week when an attendee interrupted a presentation with an expletive-filled outburst directed at Meta's AI leadership.

While the incident itself was brief, current employees told the publication it reflected broader frustrations developing across parts of Meta's AI organisation.

Applied AI team emerges as a flashpoint

At the centre of the reported discontent is Applied AI, a unit established in March to support researchers working within Meta Superintelligence Labs.

The organisation includes approximately 6,500 engineers and product managers.

Three current employees told the publication there is widespread dissatisfaction with both how the team was assembled and the nature of the work assigned to it.

Employees cited concerns including:

• Reduced autonomy over career paths
• Reassignment into new AI-focused roles
• Work perceived as repetitive or administrative
• Limited interaction with broader product teams
• Uncertainty about long-term career progression

Some workers told WIRED that assignments involve creating coding problems and evaluation tasks designed to help improve AI model performance.

Employees quoted by the publication described the work as less creative than previous software development responsibilities and said many colleagues felt disconnected from Meta's core product-building culture.

AI restructuring adds pressure across the company

The concerns extend beyond a single team.

Meta's recent AI-focused restructuring has increased workloads and stress levels across several divisions, including Instagram and data centre engineering.

The publication reported that the restructuring coincided with workforce reductions affecting approximately 10% of the company, or around 8,000 employees, last month.

Current and former employees told WIRED that the changes have contributed to what some described as record-low morale.

The report also highlighted employee opposition to a recently introduced programme designed to collect workplace interaction data for AI training purposes.

• More than 1,600 employees have signed a petition opposing the initiative
• The programme involves monitoring employee clicks and keystrokes
• Meta has since modified the initiative
• Employees can now pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and request certain exemptions

The company has not publicly commented on the employee allegations cited by WIRED.

Leadership acknowledges employee concerns

Senior Meta leaders have also publicly recognised the challenges created by recent organisational changes.

During an internal Instagram meeting, Chris Cox, Meta's Chief Product Officer, described the recent period as both "difficult" and "brutal".

According to the publication, Cox praised employees for continuing to deliver products and support Instagram's roughly 2 billion users despite ongoing disruption.

He also cautioned against extreme views of artificial intelligence, telling employees that AI was neither as transformative nor as threatening as some narratives suggest.

The comments were followed by an internal memo from Mark Zuckerberg, reviewed by WIRED, in which the Meta chief acknowledged that recent organisational changes had caused distress among employees.

"Given the complexity of these changes, we've made mistakes and will almost certainly make more," Zuckerberg wrote, according to the publication.

Zuckerberg promises stability

In the memo, Zuckerberg sought to reassure employees that further large-scale workforce reductions are not planned this year.

According to WIRED, the CEO outlined several measures aimed at improving employee experience and organisational stability, including:

• No additional mass layoffs in 2026
• Lower employee-to-manager ratios
• Increased budgets for team events
• A company-wide hackathon planned for next month
• The return of assigned desks in many office locations by year-end

Zuckerberg also addressed concerns surrounding Applied AI directly.

According to the memo, he described the team as an important part of Meta's AI development efforts while indicating that employees may eventually transition into other roles across the company as new opportunities emerge.

The challenge behind Meta's AI ambitions

The reported tensions highlight a challenge increasingly facing technology companies as they race to develop advanced AI systems.

While organisations are investing billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, talent and research, many are also asking employees to adapt quickly to new priorities, structures and ways of working.

For Meta, the success of its AI strategy may depend not only on technological breakthroughs but also on its ability to maintain employee engagement during one of the most significant transformations in the company's history.

As competition in the AI sector intensifies, the company's efforts to stabilise morale and rebuild trust among employees could become as important as the technology itself.