With the goal of laying off other Googlers, the company is now developing AI tools.
We discovered in December that Google’s ad sales division may be facing layoffs, and now those rumors have materialized. Google is reportedly firing “hundreds of employees” from the ad sales division, according to Business Insider. The “Large Customer Sales” (LCS) team, which handles the company’s largest advertising clients, is where the majority of the layoffs are made.
This was what we anticipated. The information indicated that Google’s ad division might experience layoffs this month. According to that research, a large number of them are being replaced by AI and are either being laid off or reassigned. Recently, Google has been adding a ton of generative AI features to Google Ads, its flagship product. One is a natural language chatbot that assists users in navigating the wide array of advertising products; another is an autonomous system that generates text and image ad assets based on the goals and budget provided by the ad buyer.
As part of a product called “Performance Max,” Google’s generative AI ad engine automatically remixes and modifies your advertising based on click-through rate, which serves as an instantaneous feedback mechanism. AI can now perform tasks that humans could once only perform once per thousand seconds, such as creating graphic assets, deciding on text and layouts, and providing sales recommendations for Google’s goods.
This is the most recent layoff that Google has experienced since last year. “Hundreds” of employees were let go from the AR, Google Assistant, and hardware areas last week. Prior to that, layoffs occurred in Google News, and prior to that, layoffs occurred in Waze, Waymo, the robot division, recruitment, and pretty much everywhere at Google.
The complete staff note announcing the layoffs, which was delivered by Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, is available in the Business Insider piece. Although AI isn’t mentioned in the message as a factor in the layoffs, it appears from the earlier report that Google employees are now trying to fire some of their colleagues. This is going to be one of the first in an anticipated wave of employment layoffs in the industry due to generative AI.
