Tech companies desperately want to film you doing chores

Shift says it will clean homes for free in New York, with plans to expand to cities like London, if residents allow its cleaners to be filmed doing household tasks. The footage would capture routine chores such as washing dishes and mopping floors to help train home robotics systems.

The offer highlights a growing scramble for real-world domestic data, which is harder to collect than text or web images and crucial for robots meant to operate in messy homes. It also raises privacy and consent questions as companies look for ways to turn everyday spaces into AI training environments.

This week, an AI training startup called Shift said it would clean New Yorkers' homes for free. It has plans to expand into other cities as well, including London, and looking around my flat, I get the appeal. But there's a catch. There's always a catch. In exchange for the cleaning, Shift wants footage of its cleaners at work: scrubbing dishes, wiping counters, dusting tables, mopping floors. It wants everything. Video of all the boring domestic labor we'd happily outsource if we could - and that robotics companies are racing to teach machines to do so they can sell us something to do it for us. That's harder than it sounds. Unlike cha … Read the full story at The Verge.