Meta quietly disbands its Responsible AI team, spreads members across generative AI groups

Meta just did something that sounds like a bad joke in the making: it disbanded its Responsible AI (RAI) team.

According to a report from The Information, which cited an internal post, most of the RAI staff are being shuffled into the company’s generative AI product team. A few others will land on Meta’s AI infrastructure side. The company’s official line, delivered via spokesperson Nisha Deo, is that this is meant to “continue to prioritize and invest in safe and responsible AI development.” Sure.

Let’s not pretend this is the first sign of trouble. Earlier this year, Business Insider reported that layoffs had already reduced RAI to what they called “a shell of a team.” The team had been around since 2019, but apparently had little autonomy — its initiatives had to go through lengthy stakeholder negotiations before anything could actually happen. In other words, it was already toothless.

Now, I’m not saying Meta is abandoning all pretense of responsibility. But if you look at the track record, it’s hard to be optimistic. Facebook’s translation AI once caused a false arrest. WhatsApp’s AI sticker generator produces biased images depending on how you prompt it. Instagram’s algorithms have been caught helping people find child sexual abuse material. These aren’t edge cases; they’re systemic failures that an RAI team was supposedly created to catch.

Meta isn’t alone in this. Microsoft did something similar earlier this year — quietly moving responsible AI folks into other teams. And this is happening while governments are scrambling to write rules. The US has its executive orders and voluntary agreements with AI companies. The EU is still wrestling with its AI Act. But if the people whose job it is to think about safety are being absorbed into product teams whose job it is to ship features, what exactly are we expecting to happen?

Look, I get it. Generative AI is the hot thing. Every company wants a piece of the action. But disbanding the team that’s supposed to keep things from going off the rails — and calling it a “restructuring” — feels like the kind of move that will look terrible in retrospect. Either Meta genuinely believes its remaining safety processes are enough, or it’s betting that the regulators won’t catch up before the next scandal hits.

I know which one I’d put my money on.