By Kayla DeKraker
Fifteen percent of Pinterest employees are losing their jobs due to AI, continuing a trend spreading across various sectors.
The company will eliminate around 700 jobs in an effort to “[pivot] resources toward higher-growth areas such as artificial intelligence.”
“At Pinterest, AI is a core competency and has played a central role in how we have transformed our business over the last 2-plus years for both our users and advertisers,” CEO Bill Ready said during the company’s Q3 call.
The social media platform earns money from ads. However, traditional ads have not been lucrative for the app recently, leading to a loss in profits and the decision to prioritize AI to boost revenue. Pinterest also plans to downsize its office by shutting down or consolidating certain spaces. The restructuring is expected to be completed by September of 2026, with pre-tax charges of $35 million to $45 million associated with severance, benefits and real estate costs.
Pinterest users, however, aren’t happy with the platform’s pivot towards AI, believing it takes away from creativity and its usefulness.
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“Pinterest used to be my go-to platform for authentic interior design references, real spaces, real projects, real inspiration,” one user commented on a recent post by Pinterest. “Lately, search results feel overwhelmed by generic Al-generated images that dilute creativity and make discovery frustrating. Without a clear way to filter Al content, the platform is losing what made it valuable in the first place. Disappointed, and hoping you address this.”
Another person added, “You need to do something about the Al generated recipes that lead to profiles with completely Al generated content that lead to websites with the same. They are flooding the platform and it’s hard to tell the real recipes from fake.”
“Ai isn’t useful for needing inspiration for real life things,” someone else emphasized. “I need to see what humans do to solve issues or create doable projects. It’s now more ai than anything real. It’s no longer useful at all.”
Pinterest isn’t the first company to prioritize artificial intelligence. Amazon previously cut 14,000 jobs to “ramp up AI investments while trimming costs elsewhere.”
Despite the many lost jobs, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy believes a focus on AI is in the best interest of customers.
“If you believe your mission is to make customers’ lives easier and better every day, and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI, you’re going to invest very aggressively in AI, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said. “You can see that in the 1,000-plus AI applications we’re building across Amazon. You can see that with our next generation of Alexa, named Alexa+,”
GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders suggested that “outside factors” and the current economic climate also partly explain the shift to AI.
“It needs to act if it wants to continue with a good bottom-line performance,” he said, per AP News. “This is especially so given the amount of investment the company is making in areas like logistics and AI. In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure.”
While companies see the pros of AI, many users seem concerned by the tech’s increasing role on platforms. What do you think?
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