Micro-licensing

"Gig AI trainers —who upload everything from scenes around them to photos, videos and audio of themselves —are at the frontlines of a new global data gold rush.

"As Silicon Valley’s hunger for high-quality, human-grade data outpaces what can be scraped from the open internet, a thriving industry of data marketplaces has emerged to bridge the gap. 

"From Cape Town to Chicago, thousands of people are now micro-licensing their biometric identities and intimate data to train the next generation of AI.

"But this new gig economy comes with trade-offs. In exchange for a few dollars, its trainers are fueling an industry that may eventually render their skills obsolete, while leaving some of them vulnerable to a future of deepfakes, identity theft and digital exploitation that they are only just beginning to understand."