Dukaan founder and CEO Suumit Shah, who faced backlash after his comment on profitability and sympathy following his announcement of laying off 90 percent of the company's support team, on Wednesday responded to one of the critics with a mock AI tweet.
Shah, who has been called nonchalant and insensitive for brushing off enquiries on the support laid-off employees were being offered, said he was impressed by a Twitter user who used the Dukaan CEO's own style to criticise him.
"Wow, I'm impressed! It's not every day you see someone turn self-deprecation into an art form," Shah wrote, adding, "This reply is generated by AI, and seems it's great at handling jokes... and jokers."
Dukaan, a DIY platform that allows merchants with zero programming experience to set up their own e-commerce store, has become the latest company to axe part of its human workforce due to AI (artificial intelligence).
In a Twitter thread shared Monday, Suumit Shah explained that resolution time went down to 3 minutes and 12 seconds from the previous 2 hours and 13 minutes after the introduction of Dukaan’s own AI assistant.
“We had to lay off 90 percent of our support team because of this AI chatbot,” Shah wrote, branding it a “tough” but “necessary decision.”
Asked if the laid-off staff were provided with any assistance, he brushed off the query saying further details on layoffs would be revealed in his upcoming LinkedIn post.
“As expected, 'someone' will get offended on behalf of 'someone else', so I had this reply ready: Assistance ke bare mein jab Linkedin pe post karunga tab dekh lena mere dost, yahaan Twitter pe log ‘profitability’ dekhte hai ‘sympathy’ nahi,” he wrote, prompting more backlash.
Read more: Dukaan CEO cops backlash for post announcing layoffs: ‘Stunning lack of empathy’
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