Published on: November 10, 2026 at 9:35 am
Layoffs at big tech companies are not always what they seem—and they may or may not be directly caused by AI. Behind the headline numbers is a quieter, more complex reshuffling of work, noted Fabio Lauria, founder and CEO of AI analytics company Electe: Open roles are never filled, employees are moved internally between teams and departments, and more work shifts to contractors or is automated.
According to Academy of Management Scholar Christine Moser of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, many companies are cutting headcount and laying off personnel, either directly or indirectly due to AI.
When companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta recently announced major cuts, the numbers included not just people losing jobs—which tends to boost each company’s stock price—but also positions that were simply canceled before hiring began. Filings from Oracle show a similar pattern, with roles disappearing in one part of the business while reappearing elsewhere. The result is not simple downsizing; it is ongoing organizational churn amid restructuring, where the shape of work—and the workforce—changes even when the work itself does not.
“That is definitely going on—we already actually see jobs disappearing,” Moser said. “Think of people who translate—that’s a dying species.
“Another one is creating marketing content or even promotional clips,” she said. “I’ve heard companies selling their completely automated chatbots, so even call-center work is already being replaced and disappearing.”
Consulting is another industry being turned on its head by AI.
“Another big chunk of work being disrupted by AI is consultants,” Moser said. “There are many, many consultants in this world, and especially the junior functions are being replaced already by generative AI, which raises a number of questions for the profession going forward.
“To be clear, it’s not crazy that jobs disappear and others come up,” she said. “That’s always happening, especially since the Industrial Revolution, whereas, before that, it was pretty stable for quite a while. But since then, we see new jobs coming up and others disappearing because they have been made redundant.”
Will AI companies be forced to respect copyright law?
A growing wave of lawsuits is challenging how AI models are trained, with media companies, artists, and studios alleging that AI companies used their copyrighted work to train their algorithms without permission. Cases such as The New York Times vs. OpenAI and Microsoft, Sarah Andersen vs. Stability AI, and Warner Bros. Discovery vs. Midjourney all claim intellectual property theft and demand compensation.
“What we see here is a different matter, because, indeed, besides these jobs disappearing, there’s the question of copyright protection and enforcement,” Moser said. “People created these texts, whether they be articles, books, poems, or criticism, so they should be compensated for their use.
“There were systems in place that made sure you would get compensated, but now that seems to be off the table, and, for the most part, artists are not getting paid what AI companies owe them.”
