Meta’s layoff decisions that were made to focus on AI, were made by AI and based on employees’ use of AI, says employees selected for termination.

As reported by Jon Brodkin in ArsTechnica (Lawsuit claims Meta’s layoff decisions were made by AI, not humans, available here), Meta used internal AI tools to select employees for layoffs, according to the complaint filed yesterday by 26 “Doe” plaintiffs in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit also contends that Meta’s AI-fueled layoffs of 8,000 employees (which we covered here) targeted workers with disabilities and those who took protected medical or family leaves.

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems—including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration—to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list,” the lawsuit said.

“Metamate”? Sounds like a dating service for Meta employees. 😉

Employees were allegedly graded, among other things, on how much they used Meta’s AI tools. “Meta’s internal dashboards classified employees by their stage of adoption of its artificial-intelligence tools, using categories such as ‘AI Native,’ ‘AI First,’ and ‘AI Enabled,’” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit is apparently “the first against a major US company to challenge the alleged use of AI in conducting layoffs,” according to Reuters. The complaint alleges that Meta’s tools for monitoring employees did not account for differences caused by disabilities and protected leaves.

“Those tools draw on inputs—performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, ‘AI-native’ ratings, and AI-token consumption—that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability,” the lawsuit said.

Meta says that people made the layoff decisions. “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI,” Meta said in a statement provided to Ars earlier this week. Meta did not provide any other comment on the lawsuit.

The 26 plaintiffs requested leaves or disability accommodations in the 24 months before being selected for layoffs, the lawsuit said. The layoffs are not yet finalized, but employees are scheduled to start losing their jobs on July 22, the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs allege that Meta violated the US Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

The lawsuit said that “Meta announced these cuts even as it reported record revenue the prior month and committed to spending between $125 billion and $145 billion—more than double its 2025 expenditure—on artificial intelligence in 2026, prompting employees to question why the job cuts were necessary.”

I suspect that’s the very reason for Meta’s layoff decisions. When companies double expenditures in one place, they tend to make up for it in other places – often at the expense of employee jobs, sadly.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction requiring Meta to preserve each worker’s job and/or protected-leave status, and an independent audit to examine the layoff-selection process. Plaintiffs also want an order requiring Meta to preserve all data, models, and documents related to the layoffs “and the algorithmically assisted selection process.”

It will be interesting to see what happens. Meta’s layoff decisions were made to focus on AI. Were they made by AI and based on employees’ use of AI? We’ll see what the courts say.

So, what do you think? Are you concerned that companies will be relying on AI to make employment decisions? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using DALL-E 3, using the term “one robot handing another robot a pink slip”.

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