Amazon Mechanical Turk shuts down September 30, 2026 — 21 years of 'artificial artificial intelligence'
Amazon will shut down Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026, twenty-one years after launching it in 2005. The platform paid people small sums to complete Human Intelligence Tasks — data labeling, audio and video transcription, survey responses — work computers of the era could not do. Jeff Bezos called it artificial artificial intelligence, and the name came from an eighteenth-century chess automaton with a person concealed inside. At its peak more than 500,000 workers were registered. Amazon stopped accepting new customers in July 2026, and the closure arrives as AI training data work has migrated to newer specialist firms
The three lines
- Timing — Closing September 30, 2026, twenty-one years after launch. New customers were cut off in July
- What it was — A marketplace paying people small sums for work computers could not do. Peak: 500,000+ workers
- Why — AI training data demand moved to specialists like Scale AI, Mercor and Prolific
Key questions
- What did Mechanical Turk actually do?
- **It was a marketplace that broke small pieces of human work into internet-sized units and sold them.** Amazon launched it in 2005: a business posted a task, and workers anywhere completed it for a few cents. Amazon called each unit a **HIT — a Human Intelligence Task**. The staples were **data labeling** (naming objects in photographs), **audio and video transcription**, and **survey responses**. What they had in common was that at the time they were **impossible for computers and easy for people**. The name comes from **the Turk, an eighteenth-century chess automaton** that toured Europe appearing to play by machinery — with **a person hidden in the cabinet**. Jeff Bezos called the service **"artificial artificial intelligence"**: it looks like automation, and inside it is a human being.
- Why is it closing now?
- **The demand did not disappear; it moved.** Human work feeding AI has grown, not shrunk. What changed is its character — the volume used to be simple annotation, and what is needed now is **people with domain knowledge evaluating a model's answers and writing better ones**. That demand went to **Scale AI, Mercor and Prolific**, which took the workers with it. Amazon had put little into MTurk for years and the platform aged; in **July 2026** it **stopped accepting new customers**, which many workers read as a signal. The shutdown was announced roughly a month later.
- What does this have to do with AI?
- **It shows where the impression that AI 'just learns' came from.** A model learns from data with answers attached, and those answers are mostly attached by people. For two decades MTurk was one of the channels through which that happened. The name is the point — **there was a person inside the automaton**, and that maps directly onto the AI training pipeline. What the closure signals is not that the person disappears but that they are **replaced by a more expensive, more specialised person**. This page covers the mechanics in today's "What data labeling is."
Amazon will shut down Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026.
The service launched in 2005. Twenty-one years.
Its name and its closing date, together, say something about what AI grew up on.
1. What it was
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Launched | 2005 |
| Closing | September 30, 2026 |
| New customers cut off | July 2026 |
| Unit of work | HIT — Human Intelligence Task |
| Typical tasks | data labeling · transcription · survey responses |
| Peak registered workers | more than 500,000 |
A business posted small tasks; workers anywhere completed them for a few cents each.
What the tasks had in common: impossible for computers of the time, easy for people. Is there a cat in this photo. What was said in this recording.
2. The name is the architecture
"Mechanical Turk" was an eighteenth-century chess automaton that toured Europe.
It appeared to play chess by itself, and it beat people. Inside the cabinet, a person was hidden.
Jeff Bezos called the service "artificial artificial intelligence" — a doubled word with a precise meaning: it looks automated, and inside, a human is doing it.
The name has aged into accuracy. A large share of the "answers" attached to the data today's models learn from were attached by people. This page covers that structure in today's "What data labeling is."
3. Why it is closing — demand moved, not vanished
Reading this as "AI took the jobs" is half right. More precisely, the kind of work changed, and other companies took it.
| MTurk's work | The work needed now | |
|---|---|---|
| Character | simple, repetitive (attach a label) | expert judgment (evaluate and rewrite model answers) |
| Qualification | generally none | domain knowledge (medicine, law, code) |
| Rate | cents per task | far higher |
| Main firms | MTurk | Scale AI · Mercor · Prolific |
As models improve, the work left for people moves up into what models still cannot do. Attaching a "cat" label to a photograph is now done by a model. Judging whether a model's medical answer is correct is not, and not everyone can do it.
MTurk did not follow that move. Amazon had invested little in it for years, the platform aged, and the specialist firms took the workers along with the demand.
4. The path to closure
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 2005 | Service launches |
| — | Peak of more than 500,000 registered workers |
| July 2026 | New customers no longer accepted |
| ~August 25, 2026 | Shutdown announced |
| September 30, 2026 | Service closes |
July's cut-off was effectively the notice. Many workers read it as a closing signal at the time, and the announcement followed about a month later.
5. Open questions the closure leaves
- Where do the workers go? Amazon did not publish the number of active workers at closure or any transition support. Those who can move to specialist firms and those who cannot will separate.
- What happens to academic research? MTurk was long used to recruit survey respondents in the social sciences and psychology. Where that work goes next could not be established here.
- Do costs rise? If simple tasks did not disappear but converted into expert tasks, the human cost of AI training does not fall — the rate goes up.
6. What could not be confirmed
- The 500,000 figure — common across outlets, but the date and basis are unclear.
- Worker support — active-worker counts and transition terms were not disclosed.
- Business size — MTurk revenue and its weight inside Amazon are unknown.
- Worker migration — no figures on how many specialist firms absorbed.
- Name origin — the automaton link is widely reported but Amazon's own naming record was not verified.
Sources
- CNBC — Amazon service Bezos once called 'artificial artificial intelligence' is shutting down
- Quartz — Amazon shutting down Mechanical Turk platform on Sept. 30, 2026
- PYMNTS — Amazon Sunsets Crowd-Sourced Work Platform MTurk
- TechCrunch — Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk
- The Register — Amazon's Mechanical Turk to stop accepting new customers
- MarketScreener — Amazon to Shut Down Mechanical Turk on Sept. 30