Anyone who works at Meta—or knows someone who does—will likely tell you the same story: the company is far from a happy place. This is especially true given the seemingly endless rounds of layoffs that have unfolded over the past few years, cuts that have only intensified as Meta pours billions into artificial intelligence. A new report from Wired now suggests that the company’s Applied AI team is on the verge of open rebellion.

The tension boiled over when someone hijacked a livestreamed, employee-only presentation this week with an expletive-filled outburst, demanding that attendees tell a senior Meta AI executive that he was “a piece of sh_t.” One presenter reportedly covered their face with their hands in response. According to Wired, that outburst reflects a simmering rage inside the three-month-old unit, which consists of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers tasked with supporting the company’s AI research ambitions.

Employees describe being forced into the group with no real choice: join or quit. Many refer to themselves as “draftees.” Their assigned work? Generating puzzles and coding problems to train AI models. “It’s literally the gulag,” one employee told Wired. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” said another.

Meanwhile, more than 1,600 Meta employees across the company have signed a petition protesting a program that monitors their clicks and keystrokes for AI training data. Even Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, called the current environment “brutal” during a call with employees this week.

According to earlier reports, the Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, who previously served as a vice president in Meta’s Reality Labs division—the same division that burned through $83 billion on the metaverse before Meta shifted its focus to AI. The new organization reports up to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. Initially, the team was structured so that up to 50 employees reported to a single manager.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly addressed the situation in an internal memo on Friday, acknowledging that recent changes had “caused distress” and admitting that the company had made mistakes it plans to fix. According to Wired, he added in his memo that “Meta’s north star is to be the best place for the most talented people in the world to make an impact.”