This AI-pilled CEO's memo cutting over 21% of the company is a prime example of the new layoffs playbook - AOL.com

Hot on the heels of GM's little 'skills swap' we covered last week, DeepL's CEO Jarek Kutylowski has decided to one-up them with a more elegant approach: chop over 21% of the company and blame it on AI. In a memo that reads like a parody of itself, Kutylowski cheerfully explains that 'that shift is because of AI' – as if the technology itself wrote the redundancy notices. No messy talk of margins or shareholder pressure, just a clean, tech-forward justification that sounds almost noble.

The memo ticks every box in the modern layoffs playbook: smaller teams, fewer management layers, and a vague promise of AI-driven efficiency. Because nothing says 'we're building the future' quite like ditching a fifth of your workforce and calling it progress. The gallows-humour crowd will note that DeepL, a translation company, is apparently so impressed by its own AI that it no longer needs the humans who built it. That's commitment to the bit – like a chef eating his own restaurant.

What's truly unsettling is how quickly this becomes the standard. Kutylowski isn't a rogue actor; he's following a script already perfected by Meta, Google, and now GM. The message is clear: AI is the perfect scapegoat for any restructuring, and the 'AI-pilled CEO' is the new management archetype – charismatic, decisive, and utterly indifferent to the careers he's torching. As playbooks go, it's devastatingly effective.