Meta's Project OT plan to replace employees with AI falters
Meta's big plan to swap out employees for AI (called Project OT) didn't go as expected.
The idea was to shrink teams from around 15 people down to just three to five, with AI picking up the slack.
But after the first round of layoffs in May, things got messy: employees pushed back, a lawsuit popped up over unfair treatment, and tech glitches made many employees nervous about relying so much on AI.
Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges AI agent delays
Project OT wanted to cut some teams by up to 60%, freeze hiring, and use new HR tools to find irreplacable talent who could work alongside AI.
But morale took a dive (employee sentiment dropped from 74% to 55%), tracking software felt invasive, and technical issues like outages and security risks piled up.
In July 2026, Zuckerberg said AI agent technology had not accelerated as quickly as he had anticipated and said Meta would focus more on supporting people instead of replacing them with machines.