Google lays off hundreds of employees based on artificial intelligence technology

Group confirmed Google On Tuesday, it laid off hundreds of employees within its global advertising sales team, in light of the use of automated systems (artificial intelligence) in an increasing number of administrative and creative tasks, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

The report stated that a spokesman for the giant Internet group said: “Every year we follow a rigorous process to structure our team to provide the best service to our advertising clients. As part of this, we eliminate a few hundred jobs globally.”

The spokesman added: “Employees affected by the layoffs will be able to apply for vacant positions within the team or elsewhere at Google.”

The California-based group confirmed that changes to this service will allow it to provide better support to small and medium-sized companies, while supporting more customers, while the rest of the employees will focus on customers from large companies.

Google also plans to create new roles and increase hiring this year, indicating a greater shift than during the pandemic, according to the report.

The group did not mention generative artificial intelligence (automated production of various content), which causes great confusion in many sectors, including the advertising sector.

Last week, Google Cloud announced new solutions with artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence to “help retailers personalize online shopping services, modernize operations, and transform the deployment of new technologies in stores,” according to a statement issued by the Remote Computing Branch in Google.

According to the report, the new tools allow brands to create virtual agents capable of interacting with consumers on websites and mobile applications in a more flexible and complex way than chatbots that do not contain generative artificial intelligence.

This technology, which has brought about radical changes in technology companies in Silicon Valley and beyond since last year, also works to accelerate the process of innovation and automated development.

Google Cloud includes among its new tools, “generative artificial intelligence to create and analyze product images, as well as associated descriptive texts, and automatic content generation such as attractive product descriptions, product metadata, and language adapted to search engine optimization,” according to the statement.

Google laid off about 6% of its workforce, equivalent to 12,000 employees, in January 2023 in the face of inflation and high interest rates, which means less advertiser spending. The internet giant has since been forced to invest heavily in generative artificial intelligence.