The Indian workers filming their work to train AI

Across India, a growing number of workers are filming themselves at work — not for social media, but to help train the robots of the future.

Mohammed Ashim, 22, has spent four years cutting hair and trimming beards in Bengaluru. Now he straps a small camera to a headband for five or six hours a day, recording the movements of his hands as he works. His clients' faces are blurred out; what matters is the labour.

He is one of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide being paid to record their everyday work. Local companies collect the footage and sell it on to technology firms and research organisations, which use it to teach machines physical tasks — from haircuts and stitching to factory work and household chores.

Rashdan Technologies is one such collector. The company pays $5 to $10 for eight to ten hours of recorded work — meaningful money, its founder says, for people already doing the job. Demand is growing so fast that clients are now asking for four to six cameras rigged around a worker's head to capture an entire scene.

Science teacher Jolly Arifur films herself doing domestic work for a few hours a day to fit around her teaching, earning two to three dollars an hour. Textile worker Mohammed Arman, who supports a family in Bihar, calls the extra income simple survival.

But some experts worry these workers are training their own replacements. By the time they realise what they have participated in, it may be too late, one academic warns — calling on governments to regulate the industry.