Starmer sends 'chill' through civil service, union boss says
Starmer's firing of a Foreign Office civil servant raises alarms about job security in the civil service.
BBC News1 min read
Meta to track workers' clicks and keystrokes to train AI
TL;DR
Meta will begin tracking employees' keystrokes and mouse clicks to train its AI models. The tool will log activity on Meta's computers and internal apps, with assurances that data will only be used for AI training.
Key points
- Meta will track employee keystrokes and mouse clicks
- Data will be used to train AI models
- The tool will run on Meta's computers and internal apps
- Safeguards are in place to protect sensitive content
- Some employees find the tracking dystopian
Mentioned in this story
MetaInstagramFacebook
Meta will start tracking the way employees work, including their keystrokes and mouse clicks, to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The company, which owns Instagram and Facebook, told workers on Tuesday that a new tool will run on Meta's computers and internal apps, logging their activity to be used as training data for AI technology.
A Meta spokesman told the BBC: "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them."
"The data is not used for any other purpose," he said, adding that the tool has "safeguards in place to protect sensitive content".
But one Meta employee, who asked not to be identified, said having their smallest actions on a computer being used to train AI model as workers expect a slew of additional job cuts feels "very dystopian".
"This company has become obsessed with AI," they told the BBC.
Another person who recently left the company said the tracking tool is "just the latest way they're shoving AI down everyone's throat".
Meta has already laid off around 2,000 employees this year in smaller rounds of cuts, but employees have been expecting deeper job losses in the coming months, as the BBC previously reported.
Last month, the company enacted a partial hiring freeze which now appears to be more far-reaching.
A website that Meta uses to advertise all of its jobs hosted about 800 listings in March. Now, it is advertising just seven jobs.
Meta's spokesman declined to comment on the company's removal of job listings or plans for cuts.
Meta's new tracking tool is called Model Capability Initiative or MCI, according to Reuters which first reported the move.
The BBC has been told that an employee's activity on a Meta computer would have been accessible to the company before, however tracking and logging specifically for the purpose of training and improving AI tools is new.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's co-founder and chief executive, recently pledged to ramp up spending on AI projects this year and is attempting to position the firm at the forefront of the technology.
Meta plans to spend roughly $140bn on AI in 2026, almost double the amount it invested in the technology a year ago.
In 2025, it took over nearly half of Scale AI with a $14bn (£10.3bn) investment, and brought some executives of the data-labeling firm into Meta to help it build out its AI models and tools.
The first significant launch from the company's reformed Meta Superintelligence Labs group emerged last month with the AI model Muse Spark.
Q&A
Why is Meta tracking employee keystrokes and clicks?
Meta is tracking these actions to gather real examples of how employees use computers, which will help train their AI models.
What safeguards does Meta have for employee data?
Meta has stated that there are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content collected through the tracking tool.
How do Meta employees feel about the new tracking tool?
Some employees have expressed concerns about the tracking tool, describing it as 'very dystopian' amid fears of job cuts.
