AI Companies Want to Buy Your Work Files and Emails

AI labs and data-acquisition startups are paying media companies, graduate students, and businesses for old work records—documents, emails, Slack messages, and tickets—to train models, with pitches reaching individual inboxes. Companies like Mercor, Micro1, and Handshake describe a fast-growing market, while privacy advocates question whether anonymization fully removes personal data, as seen in objections to Spirit Airlines' proposed sale of its digital assets. Critics note the practice can enlist workers without explicit consent in efforts that may ultimately automate their work.