Hi everyone! About six months ago, I made a post about my experience working as an AI trainer and the platforms I was using. I wanted to share an update because the situation has changed since then...

A bit of background: I have a purely humanities-focused background (I’m a journalist by trade). I stumbled into AI training completely by accident when I got an offer from Outlier back in the fall of 2024. Looking back, that was probably the "golden era" to start: there were plenty of interesting projects, decent managers, and the pay was fair. At one point, I even believed I could transition to doing this full-time as AI continued to evolve.

I’ve worked across several platforms (Outlier, Mercpr, Alignerr). Things were going smoothly until about the summer of 2025. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, but it felt like the market suddenly became oversaturated... the number of people wanting to work in AI started to far outweigh the available projects.

As a result:

• Pay rates dropped significantly.

• Project volume decreased, while competition skyrocketed.

• Management quality tanked. Even with solid experience and a good internal track record, finding a decent project has become a struggle.

• Referrals are hitting a wall. I noticed that people I referred to companies like Outlier or Mercpr recently almost never get assigned to any projects at all :(

In total, I’ve made about $10,000 over the course of roughly a year and a half. In the context of a "real" full-time career, it’s not a huge sum, but as a side hustle, it was good. It really helped me out during some tough financial spots. However, I was never able to fully rely on it as my sole income.

Right now, I only work on one project in my spare time. To be honest, I’m feeling pretty burnt out by the repetitive nature of the work. It’s become nearly impossible to find a project that pays at least $30/hour, and the management is often a nightmare.

On top of that, the sheer amount of fake job postings on LinkedIn and even here on Reddit related to "AI Training" is incredibly frustrating. It’s getting harder to filter through the noise.

What is your experience?