Meta's shares face a terrible moment on the NY stock exchange Reuters Twenty-six former employees of Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing the company of using an artificial intelligence system that would have harmed workers with disabilities or who had taken sick leave during a mass layoff process. According to the process, obtained by Reuters, the artificial intelligence tool would have disproportionately selected employees under these conditions to be fired. ??Do you have any reporting suggestions? Send it to g1 The action was filed on Monday (13) in a federal court in Oakland, California, in the United States. Former employees claim that Meta would have used criteria such as productivity and the use of artificial intelligence tools to decide which workers would be affected by the cuts. According to the accusation, these criteria would have harmed people who needed to miss work because of health problems. The 26 former employees, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, claim that Meta violated federal and state laws that prohibit discrimination or retaliation against workers who are disabled, take sick leave or are pregnant. The plaintiffs live in six American states, including California and New York, as well as the District of Columbia. Meta stated that the accusations are baseless. “Decisions about employee management and company organization were and continue to be made by people, not by artificial intelligence,” a company spokesperson told Reuters this Tuesday (14).
Former employees accuse Meta of using AI to choose workers with health problems in layoffs
Meta's shares face a terrible moment on the NY stock exchange Reuters Twenty-six former employees of Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing the company of using an...
The accusations come after a round of cuts carried out by the company in May, when Meta began laying off around 8,000 employees as part of a restructuring to focus resources on the development of artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, the layoffs represented around 10% of the company's workforce, which had approximately 78,900 employees at the end of 2025. Notifications began to be sent first to workers in Asia and then to employees in the United States. There was still no confirmation on the impact of the layoffs among Meta employees in Brazil. Before the cuts, the company had already informed that around 7 thousand employees would be reallocated to areas linked to artificial intelligence. According to reports from employees, the changes were not optional and increased internal tension. In a statement to employees, Meta's human resources director, Janelle Gale, stated that the decision was part of efforts to make the company more efficient and compensate for high investments in the area of ??artificial intelligence. Race for artificial intelligence increases Meta's spending Meta has increased investments in infrastructure for artificial intelligence, including purchasing chips and building data centers. The company plans to invest between US$115 billion and US$135 billion in 2026 (around R$570 billion to R$670 billion), mainly to expand its capacity to develop AI technologies. At the end of February, the company also announced an agreement with chipmaker AMD to buy millions of processors, in a contract valued at at least US$60 billion.
