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AI Trainers Exposed to ‘Deeply Unsettling’ Content File Suit for Unsafe Working Conditions

By Michelle Morgante
February 01, 2025

Contract workers who say they suffered severe psychological harm by being exposed to “deeply unsettling” and traumatic scenarios used to train generative artificial intelligence models filed a class action complaint on January 17 against three Bay Area firms for alleged negligence and unsafe working conditions.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District California by Clarkson Law Firm, alleges Scale AI, Smart Ecosystem and Outlier AI failed to accurately disclose the disturbing nature of the content involved in the work, ignored the workers’ requests for support and retaliated against those who complained.

The plaintiffs, who were known as “taskers,” said they repeatedly were assigned to view and react to violent, graphic and sexually explicit content as part of projects for the defendants’ corporate clients, including Google parent company Alphabet and Meta, which operates the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp.

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