New Tactics by Companies to Track Employee Movements, Causing Alarm
Tech giants are beginning to implement new tactics to monitor employee activities. Meta, for instance, has reportedly installed tracking software on employees’ computers in the United States to record mouse movements, clicks, and keyboard typing.
This step is part of the company’s grand strategy to build artificial intelligence (AI) agents capable of performing tasks independently.
Employee activity data will be used as training material for AI models to better understand how humans interact with computers.
The device, named Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work applications and internal company websites. The system is also said to be able to take periodic screenshots of employees’ screen displays.
In an internal memo that circulated, Meta stated that the data is necessary to enhance AI capabilities in tasks that are still difficult for machines to replicate, such as selecting dropdown menus, using keyboard shortcuts, and navigating between applications.
“This is where all Meta employees can help our models improve just by doing their daily work,” the memo wrote, quoted from Reuters on Wednesday (22/4/2026).
The company also believes employees can help improve AI model performance simply by carrying out their daily work. Thus, routine employee activities will become an automatic source of training data for Meta’s AI system.
This step aligns with Meta’s aggressive strategy to integrate AI into the company’s workflow. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth stated the company’s vision is to create a work environment where AI agents perform most tasks, while humans direct and evaluate the results.
Meta emphasised that data collected through MCI will not be used for employee performance evaluations. The company also claimed to have prepared protections against sensitive content, though it did not detail the types of data excluded.
This automation push occurs amid a major trend in US tech companies restructuring their workforce based on AI. Meta even plans to cut around 10% of its global employees starting in May, with the possibility of additional redundancies throughout the year.
At the same time, the company is also promoting the use of AI agents for coding and other technical tasks.
Meta has even begun consolidating several job functions into a new position called “AI builder” and forming a special team to develop AI agents that can build and test products automatically.
However, this practice of monitoring employee activities has sparked concerns. Collecting data such as keystrokes and screenshots is seen as increasing real-time surveillance of office workers, which was previously more commonly applied to logistics workers and gig workers.
Labour law experts assess that the step could potentially cause privacy issues, especially in regions with regulations like Europe (GDPR). Additionally, intensive surveillance is also seen as shifting the balance of power in the workplace to favour the company more.