A new era of gig workers has emerged, with thousands of people worldwide selling moments of their lives to artificial intelligence companies for quick cash. From Cape Town to Chicago, these gig AI trainers are uploading everything from scenes around them to photos, videos, and audio of themselves to train the next generation of AI.
According to The Guardian, this trend is part of a larger shift in the way AI companies are sourcing their data. With the most used training sources restricting generative AI companies from training models with their data, AI companies are turning to data marketplaces to bridge the gap. Jacobus Louw, a 27-year-old based in Cape Town, South Africa, is one such trainer, who earns money by uploading pictures and videos of his everyday life to Kled AI, an app that pays contributors for their data.
Louw's story is not unique. Sahil Tigga, a 22-year-old student from Ranchi, India, regularly earns money by letting Silencio, a company that crowdsources audio data for AI training, access his phone's microphone to capture ambient city noise. Ramelio Hill, an 18-year-old welding apprentice from Chicago, made a couple hundred dollars by selling his private phone chats with friends and family to Neon Mobile, a conversational AI training platform.
The Rise of Gig AI Training
Gig AI training is a new emerging category of work, and it will grow substantially, said Bouke Klein Teeselink, an economics professor at King's College London. AI companies know that paying people to license their data helps avoid the risk of copyright disputes they could face if they relied entirely on content scraped from the web. These companies also need high-quality data in order to model new, improved behaviours in their systems, said Veniamin Veselovsky, an AI researcher.
The humans fueling the machines, particularly those in developing countries, often need the money and have few other options for earning it. For many gig AI trainers, doing this work is a pragmatic response to economic disparity. In countries with high unemployment and devalued currencies, earning US currency is often more stable and rewarding than local jobs.
The Pitfalls of Gig AI Training
However, the pitfalls of gig AI training can be invisible. On some AI marketplaces, data trainers grant irrevocable, royalty-free licenses that allow companies to create "derivative works", meaning a 20-minute voice recording today could power an AI customer service bot for the next few years, with the trainer never seeing another cent. Plus, due to the lack of transparency in these marketplaces, a user's face could end up in a facial recognition database or a predatory advertisement half a world away, with virtually no legal recourse.
Louw, the AI trainer in Cape Town, is aware of the privacy trade-offs. And though the income is erratic and not sufficient to cover his full monthly expenses, he is willing to accept these conditions to earn money. He struggled with a nervous disorder for years and couldn't secure a job, but money earned on AI marketplaces, including Kled AI, allowed him to save up for a $500 spa training course to become a masseur.
Expert Analysis
Mark Graham, a professor of internet geography at the University of Oxford and author of Feeding the Machine, acknowledged that for individuals in developing countries, the money can be meaningful in the short term, but warned that "structurally this work is precarious, non-progressive and effectively a dead end". AI marketplaces rely on a "race to the bottom in wages", added Graham, and a "temporary demand for human data". Once this demand shifts, "workers are left with no protections, no transferable skills, and no safety net".
Jennifer King, a data privacy researcher at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, finds concerning that AI marketplaces are unclear about how and where users' data will be deployed. Without negotiating or knowing their rights, she added, "consumers run a risk of their data being repurposed in ways that they don't like or didn't understand or anticipate, and they'll have little recourse if so".
Case Studies
Adam Coy, an actor from New York, sold his likeness in 2024 for $1,000 to Captions, an AI-powered video editor that's now called Mirage. His agreement ensured his identity wouldn't be used for any political means or for selling alcohol, tobacco or pornography, and that the license would expire in a year. However, not long after, Adam's friends started forwarding him videos they'd found online featuring his face and voice garnering millions of views. In one of these videos, an Instagram reel, Adam's AI replica claims to be a "vagina doctor" and promotes unproven medical supplements for pregnant and postpartum women.
Coy said he hasn't signed up for any AI data gigs since. He'd only consider it, he said, if a company offered major compensation. Hill, the Chicago-based AI trainer, had conflicting feelings about selling his private phone calls to Neon Mobile. For about 11 hours of calls, he earned $200, but he said the app would frequently go offline and fail to release overdue payments.
Conclusion
The rise of gig AI training has created a new economy, where individuals can sell their data to train AI models. However, this economy comes with significant risks, including the potential for data misuse, exploitation, and the creation of deepfakes. As the demand for high-quality data continues to grow, it is essential to consider the implications of this trend and the potential consequences for those involved. Enrico Bonadio, a law professor at City St George's, University of London, notes that the terms of these agreements permit the platforms, as well as its clients, to do "almost anything with that material, forever, with no further payment and no realistic way for the contributor to withdraw consent or meaningfully renegotiate".
