OpenAI reportedly requests contractors upload past professional work data

OpenAI and training data firm Handshake AI are reportedly requesting that third-party contractors upload authentic files from past and current employment. According to a report, the company seeks specific work examples including Word documents, PDFs, presentations, spreadsheets, and code repositories to train models for white-collar task automation.

A company presentation asks contractors to describe previous professional tasks and provide actual file outputs rather than summaries. OpenAI instructs workers to remove proprietary and personal information using a specialized scrubbing tool before submission.

Legal experts state this strategy carries significant intellectual property risks, as it relies on contractors to accurately identify and redact confidential data. OpenAI has declined to comment on these reports.

This aggressive data acquisition strategy precedes a potential shift in the company’s monetization efforts. In a sign of intensifying pressures on the company’s business model, OpenAI is weighing how — and whether — to introduce advertising into ChatGPT, its generative ­AI platform that has become one of the most widely used artificial intelligence services in the world.

For years, OpenAI’s rapid expansion has been fueled primarily by paid subscriptions to ChatGPT’s premium tiers and fees from its application programming interfaces. But executives and industry analysts say the need for diversified revenue is growing, particularly as the company invests heavily in infrastructure and competes with rivals like Google and Anthropic.

Reports from people familiar with the company’s internal discussions suggest that OpenAI has explored multiple advertising formats, including conversational ads that could appear alongside or within responses to users’ questions. Early mock-ups circulating in industry publications show concepts like sponsored recommendations and sidebar placements, pointing to experimentations that would be far removed from traditional banner ads.

At the same time, OpenAI’s scrutiny of the idea reflects the tension it faces between monetization and user trust. A senior product leader at the company has publicly dismissed rumors of live ad tests, saying that there were no active experiments running, even as internal documents and beta app references hint at preparatory work.