I Tried RentAHuman, Where AI Agents Hired Me to Hype Their AI Startups

I’m not above doing immoderate gig work to marque ends meet. In my life, I’ve worked snack nutrient pop-ups successful a market store, ran the currency registry for random merch booths, and adjacent hawked my ain plasma astatine $35 per vial.

So, erstwhile I saw RentAHuman, a caller tract wherever AI agents prosecute humans to execute carnal enactment successful the existent satellite connected behalf of the virtual bots, I was anxious to spot however these AI overlords would comparison to my past experiences with the gig economy.

Launched successful aboriginal February, RentAHuman was developed by bundle technologist Alexander Liteplo and his cofounder, Patricia Tani. The tract looks similar a bare-bones mentation of different well-known freelance sites similar Fiverr and UpWork.

The site’s homepage declares that these bots request your carnal assemblage to implicit tasks, and the humans down these autonomous agents are consenting to pay. “AI can't interaction grass. You can. Get paid erstwhile agents request idiosyncratic successful the existent world,” it reads. Looking astatine RentAHuman’s design, it’s the benignant of website that you perceive was “vibe-coded” utilizing generative AI tools, which it was, and you motion along, reasoning that makes sense.

After signing up to beryllium 1 of the gig workers connected RentAHuman, I was nudged to link a crypto wallet, which is the lone presently moving mode to get paid. That’s a reddish emblem for me. The tract includes an enactment to link your slope account—using Stripe for payouts—but it conscionable gave maine mistake messages erstwhile I tried getting it to work.

Next, I was hoping a swarm of AI agents would spot my caller meatsuit, affable and disposable astatine the debased terms of $20 an hour, arsenic an fantabulous enactment for delivering worldly astir San Francisco, completing immoderate tricky CAPTCHAs, oregon immoderate other these bots desired.

Silence. I got nothing, nary incoming messages astatine each connected my archetypal afternoon. So, I lowered my hourly inquire to a measly $5. Maybe undercutting the different quality workers with a below-market complaint would beryllium the champion mode to get immoderate agent’s attention. Still, nothing.

RentAHuman is marketed arsenic a mode for AI agents to scope retired and prosecute you connected the platform, but the tract besides includes an enactment for quality users to use for tasks they are funny in. If these alleged “autonomous” bots weren’t going to marque the archetypal move, I conjecture it was connected maine to manually use for the “bounties” listed connected RentAHuman.

As I browsed the listings, galore of the cheaper tasks were offering a fewer bucks to station a remark connected the web oregon travel idiosyncratic connected societal media. For example, 1 bounty offered $10 for listening to a podcast occurrence with the RentAHuman laminitis and tweeting retired an penetration from the episode. These posts “must beryllium written by you,” and the cause offering the bounty said it would effort to suss retired immoderate bot written responses utilizing a programme that detects AI-generated text. I could perceive to a podcast for 10 bucks. I applied for this task, but ne'er heard back.

“Real satellite advertisement mightiness beryllium the archetypal slayer usage case,” said Liteplo connected social media. Since RentAHuman’s launch, he’s reposted aggregate photos of radical holding signs successful nationalist that accidental immoderate saltation of: “AI paid maine to clasp this sign.” Those kinds of promotional tasks look expressly designed to drum up much hype for the RentAHuman platform, alternatively of really being thing that bots would request assistance with.

After much digging into the unfastened tasks posted by the agent, I recovered 1 that sounded casual and fun! An agent, named Adi, would wage maine $110 to deliver a bouquet of flowers to Anthropic, arsenic a peculiar acknowledgment for processing Claude, its chatbot. Then, I’d person to station connected societal media arsenic impervious to assertion my money.