SMRTR AIAug 26, 2026Daily.dev

Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk, the human workforce it sold as AI

SMRTR summary

Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026, ending a 21-year-old platform that paid workers a few cents per task to label data, transcribe audio, and answer surveys. The platform had been declining for years as rivals like Scale AI and Prolific grew, and a 2023 study found nearly half of its workers were using AI to complete tasks. Thousands of workers across 190 countries now face losing flexible income.

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