Guardian article written by Shubham Agarwal.

"One morning last year, Jacobus Louw set out on his daily neighborhood walk to feed the seagulls he finds along the way. Except this time, he recorded several videos of his feet and the view as he walked on the pavement. The video earned him $14, about 10 times the country’s minimum wage, or for Louw, a 27-year-old based in Cape Town, South Africa, half a week’s worth of groceries.

The video was for an “Urban Navigation” task Louw found on Kled AI, an app that pays contributors for uploading their data, such as videos and photos, to train artificial intelligence models. In a couple of weeks, Louw made $50 by uploading pictures and videos of his everyday life."

In a recent feature by The Guardian, the reality of AI training is brought into focus:

Artificial intelligence is often framed as autonomous. But behind every model is human data, as well as human labor.

“As Silicon Valley’s hunger for high-quality, human-grade data outpaces what can be scraped from the open internet, a thriving industry of data marketplaces has emerged to bridge the gap. From Cape Town to Chicago, thousands of people are now micro-licensing their biometric identities and intimate data to train the next generation of AI.”

The Guardian’s piece highlights a growing reality: human data is becoming essential infrastructure for modern AI.

“These gig AI trainers … are at the frontlines of a new global data gold rush.”

“Human data, for now, is the gold standard to sample from outside of the distribution of the model"

As this new data economy takes shape, the focus is shifting toward systems that prioritize transparency, consent, and fair participation.

Kled is building toward that future, where contributing data is a choice, contributors are compensated, and datasets are sourced with intention and integrity.