Google will lay off hundreds of people. they will be replaced by AI

Google's leadership has confirmed the information that emerged in late December regarding their intention to reduce the workforce. Philipp Schindler, the Director of Business Development, stated in an internal memo that the company would be laying off "several hundred" employees from the advertising sales department, as reported by Business Insider.

The series of layoffs will primarily affect the Large Customer Sales (LCS) division within the advertising sector. The restructuring of the advertising unit is slated for this month, as confirmed by The Information. Some employees will leave the company, while others will be reassigned to different roles, as their responsibilities will now be handled by artificial intelligence. Schindler's memo does not explicitly mention AI.

Recently, Google Ads has incorporated numerous features of generative artificial intelligence. Notably, a chatbot has been introduced to support natural language processing, aiding customers in navigating a wide range of advertising products. There is also a system that autonomously generates advertising resources, including images and text, based on the advertiser's budget and goals. These products are part of the Performance Max package, where the configuration and content of advertisements change based on real-time click ratings. Previously, advertisers manually performed these tasks, but now AI executes the necessary operations thousands of times per second.

Google initiated another wave of layoffs last year. Last week, several hundred employees involved in hardware development, Google Assistant, and augmented reality systems lost their jobs. Prior to this, there were layoffs in the Google News, Waze, Waymo, robotics division, and the HR department.