Humanoid Robotics Companies Hire Workers in Low-Wage Countries to Film Everyday Tasks for AI Training

Humanoid robotics companies including Tesla and Figure AI face a shortage of data for “embodied intelligence.” Although models can learn from text and images, they lack real-world physical feedback from handling objects. To train robots to move goods, organize items and perform household chores, companies are buying first-person videos of human movements from lower-wage regions through suppliers such as Micro1.

As of July 2026, gig workers in Nigeria and India were being hired to record themselves carrying items, cleaning and doing household tasks, sometimes with iPhones strapped to their heads. Some jobs paid as little as $6.60 an hour, below even the local minimum wage. Demand from companies including Tesla and Figure AI has helped turn motion-data collection and annotation into an industry worth more than $100 million annually.