Google employees have been sharing heaps of anti-AI memes on internal Slack channels and chat groups, according to 404 Media—and the memes target the company’s own AI. They were even doing so just before and during Google’s major I/O event in May, where CEO Sundar Pichai proudly stated that as much as 75% of Google’s code was now written by AI, even if it was given a once-over by a human engineer afterward.
Anti-AI sentiment has been growing in recent months. From anti-data center protests to per-token costs exploding AI budgets, many workers just don’t want to use this verbose hallucination machine to do the work they were already doing perfectly well. As it turns out, much of that sentiment is present among Google employees, too.
Meme making fun of Jetski
Another reproduced version of a meme shared internally among Google employees.Credit: 404 Media
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In one meme (recreated by 404 Media to protect sources’ privacy), a Google representative on stage is backed by a slide that reads: “I/O announces entirely new ways to slop.” This received over 100 thumbs up from fellow Google employees.
Other memes and complaints focus on Google’s internal AI coding tool, Jetski. One worker showed a screenshot in which they’d asked Jetski where it got some cited numbers in a recent prompt, with the AI responding in a long-winded manner that it had just made them up. “Thanks, Jetski,” reads the impact text.
Another cited meme uses the big forehead fish template and has the fish asking the diver, “Aren’t you using AI? Why is it still taking so much time? AI is magic, are you a muggle? New best AI tool launched just today.” The driver, of course, is just trying to get on with their work. I’m not sure there isn’t a sub-executive white-collar worker alive who can’t relate to that one.
Big forehead fish meme making fun of Google AI
Credit: 404 Media
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One Google employee told 404 Media that even if AI had sped up code generation, it just made everything else the bottleneck. Now, code reviewers have to spend much more time fixing problems the AI has created. The traditional culture at Google’s engineering and infrastructure teams was to move slowly and deliberately, and AI acceleration was playing havoc with that dynamic.
In perhaps the most eye-opening portion of this story, a Google spokesperson reached out to 404 with a statement that read:
We encourage our engineers to vigorously test and critique our internal tools; that candid feedback loop is vital to how we build technology. AI coding models are designed to assist developers, but it’s critical that we maintain humans in the loop—including the oversight and expertise of our world-class engineering talent. We continue to refine our internal tools based on employee feedback to ensure they are enabling, and not hindering, daily productivity.
The spokesperson later reached out with a correction. The new statement was much the same as the first, but removed the line, “it’s critical that we maintain humans in the loop.”