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Kenyan Data Annotators Allegedly Exposed to Graphic Content for OpenAI's AI

8 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026
On this page 9 sections

In brief

An AI system built by Openai, Chatbot Developers and 1 other and deployed by Openai allegedly harmed Sama, Employees Of Sama and 1 other.

Risk domain
Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms Increased inequality and decline in employment quality
Occurred
Coverage
8 reportsJan 2022 - Jul 2023

What happened

Sama AI's Kenyan contractors were reportedly asked with excessively low pay to annotate a large volume of disturbing content to improve OpenAI's generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, and whose contract was terminated prior to completion by Sama AI.

Laws on record for this risk area

Policy angle: Classified under Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms (Increased inequality and decline in employment quality) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 4 instruments on record cover this risk area.

Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (8)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. Artificial intelligence quietly relies on workers earning $2 per hour
    sciencefocus.com · Phil Jones
  2. Exclusive: The $2 Per Hour Workers Who Made ChatGPT Safer
    time.com · Billy Perrigo
  3. 'That Was Torture;' OpenAI Reportedly Relied on Low-Paid Kenyan Laborers to Sift Through Horrific Content to Make ChatGPT Palatable
    gizmodo.com · Mack DeGeurin
  4. Open AI underpaid 200 Kenyans to perfect ChatGPT then sacked them
    qz.com · Faustine Ngila
  5. OpenAI Apparently Paid People in the Developing World $2/Hour to Look at the Most Disturbing Content Imaginable
    futurism.com · Maggie Harrison
  6. Sama Cancelled OpenAI's ChatGPT Contract 8 Months Earlier
    theinsaneapp.com · TheInsaneApp
  7. Kenyan Workers Paid Less Than $2 Per Hour By OpenAI To Work On ChatGPT, Report Says
    afrotech.com · Ngozi Nwanji
  8. The Hidden Workforce That Helped Filter Violence and Abuse Out of ChatGPT
    wsj.com · Annie Minoff, Karen Hao, Kate Linebaugh

Who was involved

Alleged deployer
Openai
Alleged harmed party
Sama, Employees Of Sama, Data Annotators

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Pre-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 6.2.

  • Societal inequality

    "Societal inequality - Increased difference in social status or wealth between individuals or groups caused or amplified by a technology system, leading to the loss of social and community wellbeing/cohesion and destabil...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Societal destabilisation

    "Societal destabilisation - Societal instability in the form of strikes, demonstrations and other types of civil unrest caused by loss of jobs to technology, unfair algorithmic outcomes, disinformation, etc."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Labour exploitation

    "Labour exploitation - Use of under-paid and/or offshore labour to develop, manage or optimise a technology system."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Job loss/losses

    "Job loss/losses - Replacement/displacement of human jobs by a technology system, leading to increased unemployment, inequality, reduced consumer spending, and social friction."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Political instability

    "Political instability - Political polarisation or unrest caused by increased inequality, job losses, over- dependence on technology making societies vulnerable to systemic failures, etc, arising from or amplified by the...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Increased income disparity

    "While AI is predicted to bring increased GDP per capita by performing existing jobs more efficiently and compensating for a decline in the workforce, especially due to population aging, the potential substitution of man...

    The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

  • Economic

    "AI is predicted to bring increased GDP per capita by performing existing jobs more efficiently and compensating for a decline in the workforce, especially due to population aging, the potential substitution of many low-...

    The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

  • Effects on Inequality

    "LLMs could potentially worsen socioeconomic inequalities (Capraro et al., 2023). Effects on inequal- ity are closely linked to the effects of LLMs on workers but ultimately depend on how the fruits of technological prog...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Other incidents involving Openai

Source record: incident #450 on the AI Incident Database · all 8 reports