![\"Indian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/c1_6118974.jpg\")
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIndian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture while slicing mangoes at her home in Chennai. (Photo: AFP)\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
KARUR, Tamil Nadu – With a smartphone strapped to her head, Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra films herself slicing mangoes to train AI-powered robots to take on household jobs in the future.<\/p>\n
Earning just over two dollars for an hour of video, her mundane recordings are invaluable for global tech companies teaching machines how to move like humans in the real world.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old is one of a growing army of thousands of AI system trainers in the world\u2019s most populous country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?\u201d said Sriramyachandra from her kitchen in Chennai in southern India\u2019s Tamil Nadu state.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may get a robot myself in the future,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence chatbots and image generators crunch reams of digital data, but building systems to navigate real-life environments is more challenging.<\/p>\n
Developers think feeding first-person footage, called \u201cegocentric data\u201d, into specialised AI models will help robots copy humans.<\/p>\n
Some AI trainers work at home, others in factories or specialised studios \u2014 using video glasses, head-mounted cameras and motion sensors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt blares \u2018hands not detected\u2019 when I\u2019m not recording properly,\u201d said Sriramyachandra, who sends recordings via a special app to the AI data company Objectways.<\/p>\n
The firm, which has offices in India and the United States, lists Fortune 500 multinationals as clients. It works with Amazon SageMaker, a platform for machine learning models.<\/p>\n
\u2018Better things\u2019<\/p>\n
The humanoid robot market is booming, with investment bank Morgan Stanley predicting there could be over a billion in use by 2050, mostly for industrial and commercial purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFolding clothes, coffee making\u2026 cooking a very specific thing, sandwich making,\u201d Objectways head Ravi Shankar said, listing videos requested by clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome jobs are supposed to be taken over, so humans can go and do better things.\u201d<\/p>\n
In India, the emerging field of spatial AI is providing new employment \u2014 for now.<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old CEO is US-based, but hires workers from Tamil Nadu, where he grew up, one of India\u2019s international technology hubs.<\/p>\n
At a Karur textile factory, busy with workers attaching labels to caps and ironing cloth bags, AFP saw eight people wearing head cameras and smart glasses supplied by Objectways.<\/p>\n
India has positioned itself as a global middleman for the creation, processing and annotation of AI data.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s likely that these data collection services will increase\u201d, said digital labour expert Aditi Surie, from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru.<\/p>\n
Informal workers<\/p>\n
India is aggressively developing its AI industry, but its leaders are aware that, alongside the technology\u2019s much-hyped benefits, automation poses risks.<\/p>\n
Government think-tank NITI Aayog said that most discussions around artificial intelligence and labour \u201cfocus on white-collar professionals and predict an almost certain loss of jobs in the segment\u201d without urgent action.<\/p>\n
\u201cLittle attention, if any, is paid to how AI can serve India\u2019s 490 million informal workers, the very people who form the backbone of our economy,\u201d it said in a report released ahead of a global AI summit in India this year.<\/p>\n
The think-tank has examined how the technology could help or harm dozens of professions \u2014 from cobblers to sewer cleaners, farmers to tea sellers.<\/p>\n
For the last decade, 55-year-old Ponni has sat on a roadside in Bengaluru, the city known as India\u2019s Silicon Valley, making flower garlands.<\/p>\n
She, too, has been paid to have a phone strapped to her forehead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next generation\u2026 who might have to do work similar to mine \u2014 they will face a problem,\u201d Ponni said.<\/p>\n
Always wearing a camera<\/p>\n
At an Objectways studio, AI system trainers film themselves performing household tasks in fake, fully furnished apartment rooms.<\/p>\n
After several thousand hours of filming, the wallpaper is changed to provide clients with variety.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I sit here, tomorrow I stand there,\u201d said engineering graduate Rani N, 21, on a break from filming herself, once again, folding a towel.<\/p>\n
Each video lasts about four minutes, and she records around 90 a day \u2014 on nearly every conceivable spot on the bed.<\/p>\n
She says the job is \u201ctolerable\u201d, but feels like she\u2019s always wearing a camera.<\/p>\n
In other rooms, colleagues arranged pencil sharpeners, water bottles and crayons in patterns, recording with depth-sensor cameras.<\/p>\n
Qanat Consulting Services in Andhra Pradesh, an Objectways subcontractor, supplies about a dozen larger data firms with recordings.<\/p>\n
Some of its 2,000 contributors perform tasks with motion-sensor bands on their \u201cwrists, hands and legs\u201d, CEO Thaslim Pattan said.<\/p>\n
Manish Agarwal of Bengaluru-based Humyn Labs, not related to Objectways, records conversations as well as videos.<\/p>\n
Contributors discuss assigned topics \u2014 ranging from politics to entertainment \u2014 for clients wanting to process speech patterns.<\/p>\n
Agarwal denies that robots will steal jobs, believing that networks of humans and robots \u201cwill work together\u201d one day, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA welder in India could be managing a welder-robot in Prague,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,12918,343,344,225399,225398,4107,85,225397,46,1359,30442,125],"class_list":["post-487316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-training","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-automation-and-labor","tag-data-annotation","tag-humanoid-robots","tag-il","tag-india-technology-sector","tag-israel","tag-machine-learning","tag-spatial-ai","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}