Amazon Axes Mechanical Turk Amid AI Advancements

Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk, a service that connected people to minor digital tasks such as data labeling and voice transcription. Founded in 2005, Mechanical Turk was once a workaround for the limitations of artificial intelligence, but AI systems have since progressed quickly.

The platform, which had over 500,000 workers at its peak, has been shrinking for years due to reduced investment from Amazon and customers seeking alternative services. Scale AI, Mercor, and Prolific are among the data-labeling businesses that have gained market share.

Some Mechanical Turk workers have even started using AI tools themselves to perform tasks, illustrating the shift in the industry.