2023United KingdomUnidentified AI tools
The news agency SWNS reported on 29 October 2026 that Rob Illidge, chief executive of Vulse, a LinkedIn employee-advocacy software company he founded in 2019, says he made more than 64% of his staff redundant over three years starting in 2023, nine employees in total, and replaced their work with AI. By his account the company had grown to 14 employees after venture funding; the marketing, sales and development teams went, and graduate roles were more at risk. He says 'AI could do a better job', that the company's AI tools cost 140 pounds a month and that it saves about 100,000 pounds a year in employment costs. The account is the employer's own; no former employee is quoted and no challenge to the redundancies is reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 31/10/2026
Dec 2023Event location unknownGPT-4 (reported)
In a post and comments on r/duolingo on 28 December 2023, a person who says they had worked as a contract translator for Duolingo for five years writes that they were off-boarded about two weeks earlier, that two of their team's four core members were let go, and that the reason given was that AI can produce content and translations, with the two who remained reviewing AI output. In January 2024 Duolingo told TechCrunch, CNN and Semafor that it had cut about 10% of its contractor workforce at the end of 2023. It told CNN that not all of the cuts were due to AI but that contractors were let go to make room for AI-related changes in how content is generated, and told Semafor that calling AI the sole reason would be an oversimplification. It disputed the word layoffs and said only a small minority of contractors were let go as projects wrapped. The translator's account of what they were told is theirs alone; no company statement addresses any individual contractor.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 26/10/2026
May 2023ItalyUnidentified image tool
A graphic designer hired in March 2022 by a cybersecurity company was dismissed in May 2023 for a justified objective reason, which the company gave as an internal reorganisation and the suppression of her post to contain costs during an economic crisis. She challenged the dismissal, arguing that the reorganisation was a pretext and that her tasks had been redistributed to other workers, not eliminated. According to legal press reports of the judgment, the company said the graphic-design tasks were first absorbed by other staff and the residual work was then done partly with the support of artificial-intelligence tools, which the marketing manager used to produce graphics of adequate quality at lower cost and in less time. The labour section of the Tribunale di Roma (judgment no. 9135 of 19 November 2025) found a real crisis and reorganisation, no possibility of redeploying her, and upheld the dismissal. The reports say the court treated AI as one of the tools the company used to make its structure more efficient, not as an autonomous cause of the dismissal; a commentary in Giustizia Insieme calls the publicity around a first dismissal caused by AI out of proportion to the ruling. The judgment itself was not read, and whether it was appealed is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
2023Event location unknownUnidentified generative AI tools
Fortune reported on 17 August 2025 that Eric Vaughan, chief executive of the enterprise-software company IgniteTech, replaced nearly 80% of the company's staff within a year after deciding in early 2023 that generative AI was an existential transformation, according to headcount figures Fortune reviewed. Vaughan told Fortune that over 2023 and into early 2024 the company replaced hundreds of employees, declining to give a number. He said staff were required to work only on AI projects every Monday and that 20% of payroll went to AI learning, and that employees who flatly refused were let go ('we said goodbye to those people'); technical staff were the most resistant, raising concerns about what the AI could not do. He said it was extremely difficult and not something he recommends, but that he would do it again. The account is the employer's; no dismissed employee is quoted.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026
31 Jul 2023Event location unknownUnidentified AI video-analysis system
According to La Razón's account of a July 2024 judgment of the High Court of Justice of Asturias, Duro Felguera replaced the continuous on-site guarding provided by the contractor Protectum with a Securitas service that, from 1 August 2023, combined cameras with artificial intelligence for video analysis, roving patrols and alarm response. The guards of the outgoing contract were left out of the new one. Protectum ended a guard's employment on 31 July 2023. The court held that Securitas did not have to take him on because the new service was different, declared the dismissal unfair and ordered Protectum to pay him €30,672.72 in compensation plus processing wages. La Razón notes that human guards still intervened in the new service and that the presence of AI was part of the reorganisation without making the dismissal lawful.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026