Meta's 'Project OT' plan to replace staff with AI is scaled back

Meta's plan to swap thousands of jobs for AI agents had a name: Project OT, for Organization Transformation. It came out of Mark Zuckerberg's January leadership retreat at his Hawaii compound, envisioned an "AI native" company where smaller teams of human "builders" managed AI-powered virtual workers, and considered scenarios that would reduce some teams by as much as 60%. Within months, it was scaled back.

That is the story Reuters lays out after scores of internal documents, recordings, and interviews with more than 20 people. Meta's own telemetry, per the reporting, showed a sharp rise in AI-assisted code but a much smaller rise in product improvements that actually reached users. Major technical and security incidents climbed 40% from the prior year, and time employees spent responding to them rose 70%.

The most public failure landed in June, when hackers exploited Meta's AI-powered customer support bot to gain access to high-profile Instagram accounts, including the dormant Obama White House account.

Hours before the first round of layoffs on May 20, Zuckerberg abandoned the second company-wide wave. Meta went ahead with a 10% workforce reduction, and Zuckerberg later told staff he did "not expect other company-wide layoffs this year."

Meta confirmed the project to Reuters, describing it as a yearlong effort focused on cost-cutting, redesigning team structures, and moving staff into new priority areas including producing training data for its AI models. Four of the analysts in our Who's Who set posted the link.