Google has made much of its progress with artificial intelligence (AI), including announcements like Gemini and Bard. Now the company appears set on adopting AI internally – leading many people to fear it stealing jobs away. According to The Information, this could result in layoffs of up to 30K employees from its Ad Sales department soon.
Sean Downey informed reporters during a meeting, that Google planned to reorganise their ad sales team; though no mention was made of layoffs. Reports indicate AI may also have an impactful and potentially disruptive role on operations that may lead to layoffs; this restructuring will primarily target Google Ad Sales as they explore ways AI could increase operational efficiencies and enhance operational efficiencies.
Google announced in May this year that they would launch AI-powered ads using natural-language dialogue in Google Ads in an effort to simplify Search ads and accelerate campaign creation. Their new AI can scan your website to generate relevant and effective keywords, titles, descriptions, images and assets as part of campaign creation process – similar to an effective sales team! In May they also unveiled the “Google Ads chatbot,” designed as both designer and sales expert!
Google’s implementation of AI could cause considerable change within their company. A report released earlier this year detailed its effects on revenue streams within digital advertising as well as how humans perform these tasks less.
Google is expanding its experiments with AI beyond advertising sales to its customer support service as it hopes that AI integration in customer support may have an immediate effect on their human-centric operations. This strategic shift follows closely behind Google’s earlier downsizings which received much media scrutiny and attention.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged these shifts and addressed the necessity of realigning Google with today’s competitive environment by outlining both challenges presented by shifting landscape as well as any associated costs of job cuts.
Google’s AI innovations, particularly Performance Max’s campaign planning software, have been at the core of this restructuring effort. Since its debut in 2021, this tool has grown increasingly sophisticated while raising questions over human sales support services being necessary.
This change could have significant ramifications on employees. According to Google’s own report, extensive use of AI should not result in job loss; even if restructuring takes place (which seems likely), employees could easily transition into different teams at Google.