The layoffs are irrelevant to the discourse. It's typically considered by management to be good, for mature companies, to periodically fire as many employees as they can sustain without visibly impacting operations, and then re-hire cheaper workers only where strictly necessary. This allows them to keep costs down, reduce risks of excessive worker entrenchment, and overcome the drawbacks of contingent hiring-sprees.

Excuses for these exercises will vary, AI is just the latest; but it's fundamentally just a labor-containment/efficiency-seeking strategy.