Meta starts capturing employee mouse movements and keystrokes for AI training
Meta is now training AI models on data collected from its own employees. According to internal memos seen by Reuters, the company has installed tracking software called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI) on US-based employees’ work computers to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes.
The tool also takes occasional screen snapshots. Meta told staff the purpose is to improve AI models in areas where they struggle to replicate human-computer interaction — like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth announced the Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) initiative in a separate memo, describing a vision where “agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve.” He did not specify how those agents would be trained, but said Meta would be “rigorous” about “building up data and evals for all the types of interactions we have as we go about our work.”
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed MCI data would be used for model training, and claimed it would not be used for performance assessments. He did not detail which types of data would be excluded from collection.
The data collection program comes alongside major workforce restructuring. Meta plans to lay off 10% of its global workforce starting May 20, with additional cuts expected later this year. Internally, the company is pushing employees to use AI agents for coding and other tasks, even at the cost of short-term productivity, and has introduced a new general-purpose job title: “AI builder.”
Meta is not alone in this trend. Amazon has trimmed 30,000 corporate employees in recent months, and Block cut nearly half its staff in February.