Over 200 Google staff who worked to improve AI system got fired

Over 200 contract employees working with Google to upgrade its artificial intelligence system have been fired in the last few weeks, according to a report by Wired.

The primary task of the workers were to review and edit responses by Google's Gemini chatbot to check if the responses were natural-sounding and accurate.

The expelled workers expressed fear that the organisation was using them to improve the AI system in a way that it can replace them in the workforce. Outsourcing company GlobalLogic that looks after Google's AI rating work carried out the layoffs without any prior intimation, the report said.

The fired employees had advanced degrees, and had professional experience in teaching, writing and research, it added. The publication also quoted the workers complaining about low remuneration and tight deadlines.

The publication also said that internal papers of the company showed that it was developing AI tools which would be able to rate chatbot responses, the very work that the employees were doing. “I was just cut off. I asked for a reason, and they said ramp-down on the project, whatever that means," the report quoted one of the fired workers as saying.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk's xAI laid off at least 500 workers from its data annotation team, which helps develop the company's Grok chatbot, Business Insider reported on Friday.

The company notified employees by email that it was planning to downsize its team of generalist AI tutors, the report said, citing multiple messages viewed by Business Insider.

Responding to a request for comment, xAI referred to a post on X in which the company said it was hiring for roles across domains and planned to increase its specialist AI tutor team by "10X."

The data annotation team, xAI's largest, teaches Grok to understand the world by contextualizing and categorizing raw data, Business Insider said.

(With Reuters inputs)