Meta spies on workers’ every click to build the AI that will replace them
Meta will be installing tracking software on its employees’ computers to capture their every keystroke and mouse movement, using the data to train the very AI models the company hopes will one day do workers’ jobs for them.
According to Reuters, Meta confirmed the programme – known as the Model Capability Initiative – (MC) in an internal memo sent to its US-based staff.
The note told employees that software would run across each of their devices, logging their digital behaviour in real time, along with occasional screenshots of their screens.
A Meta spokesperson said: “If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them – things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus”.
The data, they claim, would not be used for staff performance assessments.
However, one of the the Facebook-owner’s employees, speaking anonymously to the BBC, dubbed the move as “very dystopian”, citing having their every move harvested to train AI while simultaneously bracing for sweeping job cuts.
Another, who recently left the firm, described the tool as “just the latest way they’re shoving AI down everyone’s throat”.
Pink slips loading for the tech giant
This anxiety isn’t just speculative, with Meta recently confirming it will cut roughly 10 per cent of its global workforce – close to 8,000 staff members – in a primary wave of redundancies beginning 20 May.
Further reductions are expected in the second half of the year, and the Big Tech’s company job listings page, which once advertised 800 roles in March, now lists just seven.
According to Meta chief tech officer, Andrew Bosworth: “The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve”.
The play has been branded internally as the ‘agent transformation accelerator’ – a title that lays bare the pace Mark Zuckerberg intends to set.
The Silicon Valley billionaire and chief executive has publicly pledged to invest roughly $140bn (£103bn) in AI this year, nearly doubling last year’s outlay.
He recently announced that 2026 will “be the year that Ai dramatically changes the way we work”.
Back in January, he told his employees: “We’re starting to see projects that used to take big teams now be accomplished by a single, very talented person”.
Who watches Meta’s watchmen
According to Ifeoma Ajunwa, law professor at Yale, the legal picture of Zuckerberg’s latest move subjects white-collar employees to a degree of surveillance historically associated with delivery drivers and gig workers.
Across the pond, federal law imposes no meaningful ceiling on such monitoring, provided employees are fully informed.
But in Europe, that legally looks slightly different, where the programme would likely fall foul of GDPR.
In Germany, for example, keystroke logging has only been allowed by courts in cases involving suspect serious criminal offences.
Meta said safeguards are put in place to protect any sort of sensitive content, despite declining to specify which types of data would be excluded.
The announcement adds fear to a broader pattern, with Amazon cutting 30,000 roles in recent months and Block sheding half its staff in February.