Employees at Google DeepMind in London have voted to unionize as part of a bid to block the AI lab from providing its technology to the US and Israeli militaries.
In a letter addressed to Google’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, Debbie Weinstein, the workers asked the company to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives for DeepMind employees.
“Fundamentally, the push for unionization is about holding Google to its own ethical standards on AI, how they monetize it, what the products do, and who they work with,” John Chadfield, national officer for technology at the CWU, tells WIRED. “Through the process of unionization, workers are collectively in a much stronger place to put [demands] to an increasingly deaf management.”
The push to unionize began in February 2025, when Google’s parent company Alphabet removed a pledge not to use AI for purposes like weapons development and surveillance from its ethics guidelines, according to a DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
“A lot of people here bought into the Google DeepMind tagline ‘to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity,’” the DeepMind employee told WIRED. “The direction of travel is to further militarization of the AI models we’re building here.”
Increasingly, that concern is reflected across the industry. In late February, staff at DeepMind and OpenAI signed an open letter in support of Anthropic, after the US Department of Defense sought to designate the lab a supply chain risk over its refusal to allow its AI to be used in autonomous weapons or for mass surveillance of US citizens. Last week The New York Times reported that Google had entered into a deal allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose.” (On Friday, the US Department of Defense confirmed that it had reached deals with seven leading AI companies—including Google, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Microsoft—to use their models on classified networks.) Roughly 600 US-based Google employees reportedly signed a letter protesting the deal. “We think the [any-lawful-purpose] clause is vague enough to be effectively meaningless,” the DeepMind employee says.
In a statement, Google spokesperson Kristen Morea said: “Google UK recently received a letter from Unite and the Communications Workers Union requesting recognition for Google DeepMind UK employees. At this stage in the process, there has been no vote to unionise. We have always valued constructive dialogue with employees and we’ll remain focused on creating a positive and successful workplace.”
The company has previously defended its deals with government organizations. “We are proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security,” Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, told The New York Times last week. “We remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.”
In 2021, Google employees in the US formed the Alphabet Workers Union. The union is not recognized by Alphabet for collective bargaining purposes but has previously succeeded in negotiating agreements on behalf of Google contractors.
The DeepMind employee tells WIRED that if the staff succeeds in unionizing in the UK, they will likely demand that Google pull out of its long-standing contract with the Israeli military and seek greater transparency over how its AI products will be used, with some sort of assurance relating to layoffs made possible by automation.
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