AI data brokers including Mercor, Handshake and Micro1 are buying companies’ work records—such as documents, emails and internal messages—to train or test AI models. Wired reports that the market is drawing interest from major AI labs, though Anthropic says it does not buy workflow data from operating companies like Wired; OpenAI did not respond before publication.
A proposed sale of Spirit Airlines’ digital records, including 500 million internal messages and 20.6 million SharePoint files, is on hold after the flight attendants’ union objected over workers’ private information. Data companies say they remove personal details, but privacy advocates warn that sensitive information can remain in unstructured messages.
Why it matters
For workers, company emails and files could become AI training material without their clear consent; whether anonymization adequately protects private details remains disputed.
