Amazon's outsourcing service 'Mechanical Turk,' which had humans perform tasks that computers were not good at, will cease operations on September 30, 2026.
' Mechanical Turk ,' which started in 2005, is an outsourcing service that allows humans to perform tasks that are easy for humans but difficult for computers to process. It has been announced that this service will be shut down on September 30, 2026.
Amazon service that Jeff Bezos called artificial AI is shutting down
Amazon has announced, 'We regularly evaluate our programs, tools, and services and make adjustments based on those evaluations. As a result of our evaluation, we have decided to discontinue Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026.'
Amazon Brand Turk
https://www.mturk.com/
At its peak, over 500,000 people worked for Mechanical Turk, but the extremely low wages were a frequent topic of discussion. According to users, Amazon did not set a minimum wage guarantee, and the pay per hour of work could sometimes fall below $2 (approximately 320 yen). Furthermore, there were instances where clients who didn't like the work refused to accept it, resulting in no payment at all.
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These jobs included labeling data necessary for AI development. However, according to industry sources, Mechanical Turk has been in decline in recent years, losing users to data-related startups such as Scale AI, Mercor, and Prolific, which are recruiting talent to train AI models.
Furthermore, the quality of work performed by users has also been questioned. A 2023 study by Swiss researchers found that up to 46% of Mechanical Turk's workers completed their tasks using AI. This undermines the premise that humans organize data to train the AI.
In July 2026, they stopped accepting new customers. Mechanical Turk would close down just over two months later.
Amazon's crowdsourcing platform 'Amazon Mechanical Turk' has stopped accepting new customers - GIGAZINE
Refunds and other forms of compensation are planned after the service closes. Although the service was in decline, there were still customers who relied on it, and industry insiders pointed out that 'some people are scrambling to find alternative services.' For users, the ability to work online in their spare time was appealing, but unfortunately, they now have to find a new workplace in just one month.
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