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Workers inside Google DeepMind are pressing executives to release them from non-disparagement agreements that, in some UK contracts, bar criticism of the company for the rest of the employee’s life, including after they leave. The Washington Post reported the dispute on Tuesday, citing a contract it reviewed and interviews with two current DeepMind employees who spoke anonymously.

What the Contracts Say

Staff in the UK who signed the agreements are blocked from communicating with the public about the potential impacts of AI, the two employees said. The issue surfaced after Sofia Liguori, a London-based research engineer who resigned from DeepMind in October, told the BBC she was ignoring her contract to speak about her opposition to Google’s military AI work. “In principle I’m not allowed to criticise Google for the duration of my life,” she said.

That prompted current UK staff to check their own paperwork. Some found the same clause. Dozens of employees joined an internal discussion about it, and some posted a “1984” emoji, according to one current employee.

Google’s Response

• Friday: a Google executive told staff in the internal thread that the company would not enforce the clause against people who have left.
• Tuesday: a spokesperson said Google has “updated our terms for new hires, which included removing the post-termination aspect of non-disparagement clauses,” and that it does not enforce such clauses after employees leave.

The gap is existing contracts. Current employees say the clause should be dropped from them entirely, because a verbal non-enforcement assurance gives them no legal certainty.

Enforceability

British law protects whistleblowers who speak in the public interest. One of the employees said they doubted the lifetime restriction was enforceable, but argued it could still push workers into self-censorship. “If it’s not enforceable then the reason is to basically intimidate people,” the employee said.

Context

The dispute follows resignations at DeepMind over the company’s military contracts. The BBC reported on October 21 that Liguori and AI researcher Andreas Kirsch had left over concerns about Google’s Pentagon agreement, which allows its AI to be used for “any lawful government purpose” and says it should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, including target selection, without appropriate human oversight and control.

The Post’s reporting also notes that Google has become less tolerant of internal protest in recent years. It dropped its restrictions on military AI that followed the 2018 employee petition over a Pentagon drone-imagery contract, and in 2024 it fired workers who took part in a protest at its offices against its work with the Israeli military.