Employees sue Meta, alleging discrimination in using AI to make layoffs

A coalition of current and former Meta employees have sued the social media giant, alleging that the company used artificial intelligence in its latest round of layoffs in a way that was discriminatory.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, plaintiffs allege that Meta violated various protected-leave laws and discrimination acts related to pregnancies and disabilities, among others, and wish to pursue their claims individually in arbitration.

Attorneys representing the 26 unnamed workers said in a legal complaint filed in the United States Northern District Court of California that the plaintiffs were among the 10% of Meta's workforce cut in the company's May layoff round.

The plaintiffs allege that Meta's "constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems" failed to take approved absences into account when determining which employees to cut.

"Those tools draw on inputs—performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, 'AI-native' ratings, and AI-token consumption—that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability," the lawyers wrote in the filing.

The lawsuit accuses Meta of using metrics like token consumption, which has become a proxy for general AI usage, in a way that targeted certain employees. Because these employees and others were on leave, those metrics declined, the attorneys wrote in the filing.

Courthouse News Service previously reported the lawsuit.

A Meta spokesperson told CNBC in an email that the "claims lack merit and are not based on facts."

"Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI," the Meta spokesperson said in the statement.

The lawsuit underscores the rising anxiety about AI's impact on jobs and people with disabilities in the workforce.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a "preliminary injunction maintaining the status quo of their employment" at Meta, "pending an independent audit of the algorithmically assisted selection process and resolution of the merits of their claims in arbitration."

The lawsuit comes nearly a month after a federal judge in California ruled against tech firm Workday in a separate employee-related lawsuit involving the use of AI for hiring decisions. In that case, the judge ruled that Workday must face claims about the company's use of AI-powered job screening services that allegedly violated state and federal laws pertaining to employee discrimination.

Workday denied the allegations and said in a statement at the time that the AI recruiting software doesn't conduct hiring decisions "in California or anywhere else."

"Our technology looks only at job qualifications, not protected traits like race, age, ​or disability," Workday said in the statement. "We rigorously ​test our products as part ⁠of our Responsible AI program to confirm our tools do not harm protected groups."

WATCH: Meta rebound should continue through July, says 3Fourteen's Warren Pies.