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Amazon to shut down Mechanical Turk platform on September 30

The crowdsourced task platform launched in 2005 is closing as artificial intelligence automates data labeling and simple human tasks.

Updated Aug 26, 2026 · 16:39 UTC1 reports

The short version

  • Amazon announced it will shut down its crowdsourced work platform, Mechanical Turk, on September 30.
  • The service previously stopped accepting new users in July 2026 prior to the final shutdown announcement.
  • At its peak, Mechanical Turk had over 500,000 gig workers performing tasks like audio transcription and survey responses that automated systems could not perform at the time.
  • The platform faced declining utility as modern artificial intelligence systems took over data-labeling and task execution, with data-labeling gig work shifting toward AI training firms.

Key facts

  • Amazon announced on Tuesday that it will shut down the crowdsourced platform Mechanical Turk on September 30.[Business Insider]
  • Amazon halted the registration of new users for the platform a month prior to the closure announcement.[Business Insider]
  • Launched in 2005, Mechanical Turk reached a peak of over 500,000 registered workers.[Business Insider]
  • The service was originally developed to remove duplicate product listings on Amazon before expanding to external researchers, gig workers, and campaigns.[Business Insider]
  • A 2023 study estimated that between 33% and 46% of Mechanical Turk workers utilized large-language models to perform tasks on the service.[Business Insider]

Sources