'Gulag': Revolt ignites against Mark Zuckerberg inside Meta's massive AI unit

Mark Zuckerberg's $14 billion AI gamble hit a wall, and his own employees are losing it on internal calls.

One Meta worker interrupted a livestreamed presentation to thousands of colleagues this week, blasting the company over an open mic and demanding the call's leaders pass along a personal message to a Meta AI executive: "Tell him that he's a piece of s---," according to a recording reviewed by Wired.

A presenter buried their face in their hands, witnesses said. Other employees commented on the "spicy" opening before the meeting was muted.

The outburst was just one symptom of what the outelt described as record-low morale across Meta following CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI restructuring — which included roughly 8,000 layoffs and the forced reassignment of about 6,500 engineers and product managers to a new unit called Applied AI.

"It's literally the gulag," a current employee told Wired. Another said the menial work is "soul-crushing." Engineers say they have no choice but to join or leave the company entirely, and some have begun referring to themselves as "draftees."

The discontent comes weeks after more than 1,600 Meta employees signed a petition demanding the company halt its program monitoring U.S. workers' clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data. The new Applied AI unit is part of Zuckerberg's sprawling, multibillion-dollar push to compete with rival AI firms.