In a Bengaluru market, vendors hired to train AI systems

In a vegetable market in east Bengaluru, shopkeepers and tailors are wearing camera-equipped headbands while they work. The footage is being collected to train artificial intelligence systems, specifically humanoid robots designed to understand human movement in real-world environments like shops and markets. Workers say they were approached by representatives linked to a company called Instawork and asked to wear the devices for around five hours a day. There are no written contracts and workers say payment terms have changed within days of the project beginning. This report by TNM’s Shivani Kava examines how AI training data is increasingly being sourced from informal labour environments and what this means for consent, compensation and accountability. If you want to support journalism that investigates technology, labour and power in India, subscribe to The News Minute.