Justice for AI workers: Complaints about Outlier filed in four EU countries

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our investigation into Outlier identified 16 trackers that collect personal information and transmit it to third parties. The findings, gathered in collaboration with DIPLab and Intérêt à Agir, suggest that the platform collects extensive personal data about workers and requires them to undergo invasive biometric verification to earn money. Today, noyb filed five complaints against Scale AI, the company operating Outlier, with data protection authorities in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

“Justice for workers begins with solid evidence,” says Simone Robutti from Reversing.Works. “Big Tech treats workers as yet another source of data, but these practices clearly raise serious questions about compliance with European law.”

“It is not technically complicated to show what data is collected when you work on a private computer or phone,” says Gaetano Priori. “We hope more people will adopt our methods to gather evidence and help secure justice for workers.”

Invasive tracking, forced biometric identification

Outlier is a platform operated by Scale AI, one of the biggest players in this field is the US. More than 900,000 people work as freelancers on the platform, often earning low wages while helping train AI systems. Outlier’s customers include major corporations such as Meta, OpenAI, xAI, Google, Anthropic, and the US government

Our technical analysis found that, while workers use the Outlier platform, trackers associated with companies including TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, the survey platform Sprig and the data analytics company Datadog collect and transmit personal information to third parties every few seconds. This information includes IP addresses, contact details, unique identifiers and information about the pages workers visit.

Workers are also repeatedly required to undergo biometric verification through a company called Persona. The process includes recording a video of their face and uploading an identity document. In addition, Persona’s privacy policy allows it to collect extensive personal information, including IP addresses, device information, geolocation data, addresses and consumer credit data.

You can read more about our methods and results in the report “Surveillance at Scale: How AI Training Platforms Gather Personal Data from European Workers.”: https://hal.science/hal-05794463

Complaints filed in four EU countries

Today, noyb, an NGO working to enforce data protection laws, filed five GDPR complaints against Scale AI with data protection authorities in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

The complaints concern several alleged violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including the lack of a valid legal basis for placing trackers on workers’ devices without their consent, the processing of biometric data, and violations of the principle of data minimisation.

According to noyb, Scale AI also failed to respond to the complainants’ requests for access to their personal data, potentially violating their right of access under the GDPR. noyb is asking the competent authorities to investigate the alleged violations and proposes that they impose administrative fines to deter similar practices in the future.

Read the full press release by noyb here: https://noyb.eu/en/ai-training-platform-outlier-illegally-surveils-european-platform-workers

Do you work for Outlier? Find out who tracks your data

Data workers are essential to the AI industry. They curate content, evaluate AI responses and produce the training data that powers generative AI and other automated systems. Yet their own privacy and working conditions often remain out of sight.

We want to hear from workers on Outlier and other platforms about their experiences with tracking, identity checks and the collection of personal data.

Do you work on Outlier or another platform and want to understand what happens to your data?

We are organising a workshop for data workers who want to learn what information AI platforms collect about them, who may receive it, and how they can exercise their data protection rights.

Link to a sign-up form: https://fossil-milk-962.notion.site/bcf5e1c20ecd83d898458106f58fea79

Funding

The complaints filed by noyb are part of AI-WORLD, an interdisciplinary initiative examining working conditions across AI value chains. The initiative is led by Intérêt à Agir in partnership with DIPLab and supported by the European AI & Society Fund and the Digital Freedom Fund.

Litigation on Reversing.Works

Justice for AI workers: Complaints about Outlier filed in four EU countries

Invasive tracking, forced biometric identification

Complaints filed in four EU countries

Do you work for Outlier? Find out who tracks your data

Funding