I am no longer a mere human being. I am a conduit of reality, a medium of messages. I hold a knife in my hand and slice into an organic cucumber, hunching so the iPhone strapped to my forehead can capture all 10 fingers. I throw the slices into a salad bowl and end the recording. Somewhere, a baby robot is a tiny bit smarter.

First-person videos, shot with a camera attached to a person’s head or chest, are a growing need as more companies attempt to build bots and improve their AI models. Even though the internet is full of scrapeable videos, hyperspecific clips—like thousands of close-ups showing hands pouring water into a glass without spilling—can be critical for fine-tuning machines to excel at real-world tasks.

As interest swells, more data collection companies are looking to expand in the States. Before long, many gig workers in the US may start delivering reality to make ends meet, as well as the typical room-temperature takeout. I already had a smartphone head mount in my possession from testing DoorDash’s Tasks app. My impression was that bespoke video data was the dystopian future of gig work.

I selected ‘take out the trash’ as my inaugural bot-training task on Kled. It’s marked as ‘medium pay.’ Getting started was easy, since the app guides users on what to record: description, task requirements and a continuous in-app video of the chore being performed. I slipped the smartphone strap onto my head and filmed as I tied up the kitchen garbage bag and escorted it to the alleyway bin behind my apartment.

Kled’s breakout moment came when Patel posted a video on X showcasing a sliver of the company’s wide-ranging archive of video data. The clip was quickly viewed more than 4 million times, and data purchasers started blowing up Patel’s phone. ‘Every major foundational model and lab reached out to me asking for data,’ he tells me.