Scale AI, a company part-owned by Meta, has been paying tens of thousands of gig workers to train artificial intelligence by combing through Instagram accounts, harvesting copyrighted work, and transcribing pornographic soundtracks, the Guardian has revealed. The company, 49% controlled by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire, recruits experts in fields such as medicine, physics, and economics through its platform Outlier, which advertises flexible work for people with strong credentials.
However, workers for the platform said they have become involved in scraping an array of other people’s personal data, describing it as a morally uncomfortable exercise that diverged significantly from refining high-level systems. One Outlier contractor based in the US said users of Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, would be surprised at how data from their accounts was collected, including pictures of users and their friends.
The Guardian spoke to 10 people who have worked for Outlier, some for more than a year. Many had other jobs but sought extra work in an economy struggling under the threat of AI. “A lot of us were really desperate,” said one worker. “Many people really needed this job, myself included, and really tried to make the best of a bad situation.”
Taskers described the humiliations of AI gig work: constant monitoring, piecemeal employment, and alleged “bait-and-switch” tactics by Scale AI, which the company declined to comment on. Some were asked to transcribe pornographic soundtracks, label photos of dead animals or dog faeces, or handle violent police calls. One doctoral student said they had to label a diagram of baby genitalia.
Glenn Danas, a partner at law firm Clarkson representing AI gig workers in lawsuits against Scale AI, estimates that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide now work for platforms such as Outlier. The Guardian spoke to Outlier workers in the UK, the US, and Australia. Scale AI has contracts with the Pentagon and US defence companies, and its former CEO is Meta’s chief AI officer.
