Amazon shuts down Mechanical Turk after 21 years, effective September 30, 2026
Amazon will close AWS Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026, ending the 21-year crowd-work marketplace that paid humans a few cents per labeling, transcription, and survey task and once drew more than 500,000 workers. Turkopticon organizer Krista Pawloski says Amazon invested less in the platform as dedicated data-labeling rivals emerged and workers left — the market for human-in-the-loop training data has moved to specialist startups, and Amazon is ceding it rather than defending the position Jeff Bezos once called 'artificial artificial intelligence.'
Source: pymnts.com ↗
artificial artificial intelligence
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder
Why this matters
- → Eliminates the largest crowd-work platform after 21 years of operation
- → Reflects market consolidation: specialist data-labeling startups displaced generalist intermediary
- → Signals Amazon's strategic retreat from human-in-the-loop training as AI models advance
End of an era