Meta to Replace Humans with AI in FTC-Mandated Privacy Reviews

Meta (META) has announced a workforce reduction within its risk organization, signaling a strategic pivot towards leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to automate compliance review processes. The move reflects a broader industry trend of companies seeking to enhance efficiency and reduce operational costs through AI-driven solutions.

The internal announcement, reportedly disclosed by Michel Protti, Meta’s chief privacy and compliance officer for product, to the risk organization, was later confirmed by CNBC. The risk organization plays a crucial role in evaluating and documenting product and feature risks, ensuring adherence to global regulatory standards. Its establishment followed a significant $5 billion fine imposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the company, then known as Facebook, over privacy lapses stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

This restructuring is occurring in conjunction with other workforce adjustments at Meta, including the recently announced layoffs affecting approximately 600 employees within the Superintelligence Labs AI unit. However, Meta has emphasized that its top-tier TBD Labs division remains unaffected.

“Through our product risk and compliance team, we’ve built one of the most sophisticated compliance programs in the industry to help us evaluate our products and features,” a Meta spokesperson stated. “We routinely make organizational changes and are restructuring our team to reflect the maturity of our program and innovate faster while maintaining high compliance standards.”

Meta’s deployment of AI in risk management is geared towards streamlining processes and augmenting existing capabilities rather than replacing human judgment entirely. According to the company, the revamped system utilizes more basic automation reducing the time experts need to spend on ratified decisions, while increasing reliability because there’s less room for human error.

Rob Sherman, Meta’s Vice President of Policy, highlighted the use of automated tools to identify the applicability of legal and policy requirements to specific products. He emphasized that AI is not being used to make decisions on risk, but rather to automate the application of pre-defined rules, thus improving efficiency and reducing potential human error.

This strategic shift by Meta mirrors a wider adoption of AI across various sectors. Financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS), are actively pursuing AI initiatives to boost profitability and optimize workforce allocation.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff previously announced workforce reductions citing the efficiencies gained through AI-powered tools like the Agentforce software, which reduced the need for customer support roles.

The implications of AI-driven automation on the job market remain a subject of ongoing debate, but an increasing number of companies are incorporating AI to optimize processes and enhance productivity. Whether the current wave of adoption will lead to significant long-term disruption or a new equilibrium between human and artificial intelligence remains to be seen.