Kenyan workers were paid under USD 2 an hour to sift through huge amounts of extremely graphic content to help build a tool that tags problematic content on ChatGPT, prompting an outcry.

A Time investigation revealed that OpenAI was outsourcing the labelling of images and text describing in graphic detail sexual abuse, bestiality, self-harm, incest, hate speech, torture, murder, and violence, to Sama, a self-styled 'ethical AI' company based in San Francisco. 

Sama employees were paid between USD 1.32 to USD 2 an hour to do the work. The data was then used to train ChatGPT to keep it from responding with problematic answers.

The work reportedly caused severe distress for some data labellers, with one employee calling the work he had to do reading and labeling text for OpenAI, including reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child, as ‘torture’. 

Sama employs workers in Kenya, Uganda and India to label data for Silicon Valley clients, including Google, Meta and Microsoft.