Exclusive: Meta to Start Capturing Employee Mouse Movements, Keystrokes for AI Training Data
By Katie Paul and Jeff Horwitz
- Initiative part of broader AI workforce overhaul
- Meta says safeguards in place, data will not be used for performance reviews
- Meta urges staff to use AI agents for daily tasks, plans 10% global layoffs
- Experts warn employee surveillance raises privacy concerns
A logo of Meta AI sits outside the Meta House on the opening day of the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2025.
NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) – Meta is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.
The tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens, according to one of the memos, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a channel for the company’s model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.
The purpose, according to the memo, was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggle to replicate how humans interact with computers, like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts.
“This is where all Meta employees can help our models get better simply by doing their daily work,” it said.
The Facebook and Instagram owner has been moving aggressively to integrate AI into its workflows and reshape its workforce around the technology, arguing it will make the company operate more efficiently.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told employees in a separate memo shared on Monday that the company would step up internal data collection as part of those “AI for Work” efforts, now re-branded as Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA).
“The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve,” Bosworth said. The aim, he added, was for agents to “automatically see where we felt the need to intervene so they can be better next time.”
Bosworth did not explicitly spell out 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 acknowledged that the MCI data would be among the inputs.
AI WORKFORCE OVERHAUL
Stone said the data gathered via MCI would not be used for performance assessments or any other purpose besides model training and that safeguards were in place to protect “sensitive content,” without elaborating on which types of data would be excluded from collection.
“If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” said Stone.
The push to automate functions previously performed by human staffers reflects a broad pattern among major U.S. companies this year, especially in the tech sector.
AI tools have captivated Silicon Valley with their ability to handle complex tasks like creating apps and organizing large volumes of data with limited human oversight, sparking a selloff in stocks of traditional software companies and inspiring some executives to plan extensive job cuts.
Meta is planning to lay off 10% of its workforce globally starting on May 20 and is eyeing additional large cuts later this year.
Original source: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/meta-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-ai-training-data-2026-04-21/
