Amazon sunsets Mechanical Turk, the original "Artificial Artificial Intelligence"
Quick Answer
Amazon is discontinuing its Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing service for new customers starting July 30, 2026, transitioning it into maintenance mode.
Quick Take
This follows a 2023 study revealing crowdworkers increasingly relied on language models, diminishing the platform's value for human-generated data. Existing customers can continue using the service, but no new features will be added.
Key Points
- Mechanical Turk was launched in 2005 as 'Artificial Artificial Intelligence.'
- AWS will also close SageMaker Ground Truth and Amazon Augmented AI to new customers on the same date.
- The platform's value has declined as crowdworkers began using language models themselves.
- AI labs now prefer specialized vendors like Scale AI for quality data tasks.
- Existing customers can still use Mechanical Turk, but it will not receive new features.
📖 Reader Mode
~1 min read
Jul 6, 2026
Amazon Web Services is shutting down its crowdsourcing service Mechanical Turk to new customers starting July 30, 2026. The change was announced through the AWS Service Availability Updates. Existing customers can keep using the service, but it's moving into maintenance mode with no new features. SageMaker Ground Truth and Amazon Augmented AI are also closing to new customers on the same date.
Amazon launched Mechanical Turk in 2005 under the tagline "Artificial Artificial Intelligence." People got paid to complete small tasks that were hard for machines. In 2018, AWS tried to reposition the platform as a data annotation tool for AI training as part of SageMaker. A 2023 study found that many crowdworkers were using language models themselves, which undermined the platform's value as a source of human-generated data.
Today, AI labs tend to rely on specialized vendors like Scale AI or Surge AI, which employ vetted experts who can handle tough edge cases and quality judgments.
— Originally published at the-decoder.com
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