Gig Workers Say Meta‑Linked AI Training Involves Privacy Violations and Disturbing Tasks

A Guardian investigation reveals that tens of thousands of gig workers contracted through Scale AI’s Outlier platform have been scraping social media profiles, copyrighted artwork and even transcribing explicit content to train AI systems for Meta‑owned projects. Workers describe invasive tasks such as harvesting data from Facebook and Instagram accounts, including minors, and labeling sensitive or disturbing material, often under constant monitoring and unstable pay conditions. Many taskers say they feel exploited and ethically conflicted, believing they are training the very systems that may replace them. Scale AI denies wrongdoing, but the report highlights the growing human cost behind the data pipelines powering modern AI models.

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