LONDON — An artificial intelligence engineer has filed an unfair dismissal claim with the United Kingdom's employment tribunal against Google DeepMind, alleging he was fired for protesting the company's military AI applications. The claim states the engineer was laid off in September following meetings with human resources, after which Google concluded he had resigned, which he denies.

According to the tribunal claim, the engineer distributed flyers around Google DeepMind's London offices reading "Google provides military AI to forces committing genocide" and asking "Is your paycheck worth this?" He also emailed colleagues about Google's 2025 decision to drop a promise not to pursue weapons that harm people and surveillance violating international norms, and urged them to join United Tech and Allied Workers, a branch of the Communication Workers Union.

The engineer alleges Google discriminated against his belief that no one should be complicit in war crimes, and that he was acting as a whistleblower by emailing and leafleting colleagues. He is of Palestinian heritage.

"The job in a frontier AI research lab had been a childhood dream," the engineer said. He also said: "You were going in every day and you feel like you are, you're betraying humanity and your people."

A spokesperson for Google DeepMind said, "It does not accurately reflect the facts." The company's position is that it would not fire an employee for expressing opinions or engaging in constructive discourse in line with its company policy, or treat unionised workers differently. Google signed an AI deal with the Pentagon after Anthropic declined to remove guardrails preventing its AI being used for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.

Rosa Curling, co-executive director at Foxglove, said: "He tried to restore the ethical policies on conflict and surveillance which Google abandoned last year. Instead of listening to his warnings, the firm hit back against this important act of internal whistleblowing by sacking him."

A DeepMind insider said the 2025 change to Google's AI principles fuelled staff concern. "I know of at least 10 people who have quit as a matter of principle," the insider said. A second insider described internal views on the matter: "Many of us do not oppose the use of AI in the military in all cases, but oppose irresponsible use, or misuse by anti-democratic actors."