Amazon Closes Mechanical Turk, Its Human Workforce Sold as AI
Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk on 30 September, ending the 21-year-old marketplace that paid people cents a task to do what computers could not. A 2023 study found up to 46% of its workers were already using AI to complete the jobs.
August 26, 2026 – 2:35 pm
Credit: Amazon
Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk on 30 September, effectively permanently shutting down the platform. The notice on the MTurk homepage states:
We regularly evaluate our programs, tools, and services and make adjustments based on those assessments… Following an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close AWS Mechanical Turk, effective September 30, 2026.
The homepage still promotes the service, but beneath the closure banner it informs users that the platform will close, redirecting them to an FAQ page for more information on preparation.
Annie Palmer reported the closure for CNBC on Tuesday evening. Amazon has not released a separate statement beyond the banner on the MTurk site.
What Mechanical Turk Was
Launched in 2005, the platform connected workers with what Amazon called Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), such as:
- Labeling data
- Transcribing audio and video
- Answering surveys
Amazon’s documentation claims more than 500,000 workers across 190 countries used the platform. Requesters paid nothing until they accepted a task, and tasks could be restricted to so-called Master Workers.
The name Mechanical Turk originated from an 18th century chess-playing machine, featuring a human chess master hidden inside. Amazon initially built the service to help label data for its own store, according to a New York Times report from 2007.
A Shrinking Platform
Krista Pawloski, a data worker and organizer with advocacy group Turkopticon, told CNBC that Mechanical Turk had been in decline for years. She attributes the platform’s shrinking to Amazon directing fewer resources into its improvement while rivals like Scale AI, Mercor, and Prolific emerged. Many turkers moved to these competing platforms.
Last month, Amazon stopped accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk, leading many users on Reddit to believe the end was near – they were correct.
Nearly Half Used AI
A 2023 study by Swiss researchers found that up to 46% of Mechanical Turk workers used AI models to complete their tasks, raising questions about data quality. This shift reduces the gap between human and machine capabilities, which was the service’s original purpose.