Thomas Le Bonniec, a doctoral researcher at DiPLab, has published an op-ed in Le Nouvel Obs criticizing the European Commission’s proposed “Omnibus” digital directive. In his piece, he argues that the directive would weaken key elements of EU digital law while primarily benefiting large U.S. technology companies, including Meta, Palantir Technologies, and Alphabet. Le Bonniec situates the proposal in the broader context of the European Union’s continued reliance on American software and digital infrastructure. According to his analysis, the Omnibus directive does not reduce this dependency but instead reinforces it. He questions whether the European Commission, led by President Ursula von der Leyen and Vice-President for technological sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, is capable of advancing genuine digital autonomy under these conditions. The op-ed also highlights the potential impact on privacy and data protection. Le Bonniec warns that the directive could significantly undermine existing safeguards, without delivering the regulatory simplification or innovation gains promised by the Commission. Ultimately, he frames the Omnibus directive as a political choice with strategic consequences. As long as the EU follows a path of regulatory alignment that favors U.S. digital interests, he argues, it risks entrenching its dependence on Washington. Rejecting the Omnibus directive, Le Bonniec concludes, would be a first step toward building a credible and independent European digital sovereignty.

Antonio Casilli, professor and researcher at DiPLab, appeared in a recent episode of Le Iene, Italy’s well-known investigative television program, as part of an in-depth report on the working conditions of people who train artificial intelligence systems in Nairobi, Kenya. No Caption No Caption No Caption No Caption The report focuses on the human infrastructure behind AI technologies: men and women who label data, moderate content, and refine algorithms, often working for major multinational companies under precarious conditions. Casilli contributed his analysis to help contextualize this hidden economy and explain the structural dynamics that shape it. A significant part of the investigation takes place in Nairobi, Kenya, where many of these tasks are outsourced. The report documents how local workers are employed to train algorithms for low pay, performing repetitive and psychologically demanding work that makes AI systems appear more “intelligent.” Through on-the-ground reporting and interviews, journalist Nicola Barraco examines the economic and human costs embedded in today’s AI supply chains. Casilli’s intervention situates these testimonies within a broader critique of the global AI industry. The segment underscores a central question: as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and profitable, who bears the real cost of its development? By bringing visibility to this hidden labor, Le Iene contributes to a growing international debate on ethics, accountability, and working conditions in the AI economy.

DiPLab is proud to announce the publication of our latest research report: Data Work in Egypt: Who Are the Workers Behind Artificial Intelligence? This new study, led by Dr. Myriam Raymond with Lucy Neveux, Prof. Antonio A. Casilli, and Dr. Paola Tubaro, provides the first comprehensive examination of Egyptian data workers training AI systems for tech giants worldwide. How to cite this report: > Myriam Raymond, Lucy Neveux, Antonio A. Casilli, Paola Tubaro (2025). “Data > Work in Egypt. Who are the Workers Behind Artificial Intelligence”. DiPLab > Report. <https://hal.science/hal-05417930> > > Tweet Rapport DiPLab Egypte-DefcDownload KEY FINDINGS AT A GLANCE Our survey of over 600 Egyptian platform workers reveals a troubling reality: * Three-quarters depend on platform income to pay their bills * Average monthly earnings: $58.76 (less than half Egypt’s minimum wage of $147) * Hourly rate: $1.22 (compared to global average of $4.43 in 2018) * 76% identify as men, 74% are between 18-34 years old * 60% hold bachelor’s degrees in science or technical fields * 83% work on platforms out of financial necessity Both male and female data workers tend to be younger than the general Egyptian workforce A WORKFORCE IN CRISIS While Silicon Valley celebrates AI breakthroughs, our research exposes the human cost behind these innovations. Egyptian workers perform essential tasks—labeling images, transcribing audio, evaluating content, annotating data—that train machine learning models used globally. Yet they earn poverty wages for skilled work requiring technical knowledge and multilingual literacy. “We were struck by the contradiction,” says lead researcher Dr. Myriam Raymond. “These are highly educated individuals—60% hold bachelor’s degrees in science or technical fields—yet they’re earning $1.22 per hour on average, working for global tech companies that profit enormously from their labor.” Our data reveals severe income volatility. Rather than providing stable supplemental income, platform work traps Egyptian workers in a cycle of precarity: Most workers experience volatile or extremely volatile income, with earnings fluctuating dramatically month to month When we asked how workers used their last month’s platform earnings, the results were stark: the overwhelming majority spent their income immediately on rent, food, and clothes. Only a tiny fraction had the financial security to use earnings for hobbies or savings. Platform work serves as a lifeline rather than a source of financial flexibility CONDITIONS WORSE THAN SEVEN YEARS AGO Comparing our findings with the International Labor Organization’s 2018 global study reveals a disturbing trend: conditions for data workers have deteriorated significantly. * Increased education requirements: 70% now hold bachelor’s degrees vs. 57% globally in 2018 * Hourly rates dropped 72%: from $4.43 (2018 global average) to $1.22 (Egypt 2025) * Workforce demographic shift: from married adults with children to precarious single young people OUR RECOMMENDATIONS DiPLab’s report concludes with actionable policy recommendations: For Governments: * Improve measurement of data work in official statistics * Promote financial inclusion for platform workers * Simplify activity registration to encourage formalization * Ensure social security coverage For Platforms: * Implement transparent payment systems with minimum wage requirements * Disclose task allocation criteria clearly * Establish fair conflict resolution mechanisms * Provide dedicated worker support

What does our relationship with work actually mean? This was the central question explored on France 24’s The Debate, where DiPLab’s own Antonio Casilli, Professor of Sociology at Institut Polytechnique de Paris, joined a panel of experts to dissect the evolving landscape of work in an age of AI, gig economies, and generational upheaval. Professor Casilli brought his extensive research on digital labor and platform economies to the conversation, offering crucial context on how technology is reshaping not just what work we do, but how we think about work itself. The debate, facilitated by journalist François Picard, brought together diverse perspectives including Dipty Chander (President of E-mma), Benjamin Chaminade (CEO of Reboot-inc), and economist Gilles Saint-Paul. Alongside Casilli, they explored whether humans should still define themselves by how they earn their keep, and what we can expect as inequality grows and technology accelerates.

DiPLab is proud to announce that the documentary In the Belly of AI, directed by Henri Poulain and co-written by DiPLab’s Antonio Casilli together with Julien Goetz and Lili Fernandez, has been awarded the 44th International URTI (International Radio and Television Union) Grand Prix for Author’s Documentary. This distinction is one of the most prestigious international awards in public broadcasting. It recognizes the depth and urgency of the stories the film brings to light. Based on DiPLab’s long-term research into digital labor and the hidden workforce behind artificial intelligence, In the Belly of AI has already been broadcast across numerous countries, including France, Japan, Canada, Spain, Belgium, and Finland. The URTI Grand Prix gives renewed momentum to the documentary’s global journey, at a time when the themes it explores are becoming more pressing every day. The team extends its gratitude to France Télévisions, whose public service mission remains essential to making such investigations possible, and to Federation Studios, whose international distribution work has allowed the film to reach audiences around the world.

In a recent article on Radio France Internationale (RFI), to which DiPLab’s co-founder Antonio Casilli contributed on behalf of the research group, readers encounter detailed testimonies from AI’s data workers across Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, Togo, Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa who have performed data annotation and AI-training tasks for companies such as Outlier, Appen, and Mindrift. These stories confirm a structural reality: while generative AI has exploded, it has made AI’s hidden labor more indispensable than ever. Moreover, the working conditions behind the scenes remain precarious. Workers describe how, after years of continuous tasks on online platforms, work has dried up, accounts have been abruptly closed, and only short, unstable tasks remain. Others relate juggling multiple platforms and projects (LLM evaluation, text and image annotation, audio labelling) because earnings from any single platform are not sufficient. Across the African continent, the boom in AI has not reduced human labor needs; on the contrary, as DiPLab’s data shows, the growth of generative systems requires more human re-training and fine-tuning, not less. The testimonies gathered also echo the long history of “digital labor” in Africa: fragmented, piecemeal work distributed by global companies seeking inexpensive and highly flexible labor. The scandals surrounding Sama (a Kenyan company that moderated content for Meta and OpenAI before workers exposed traumatic working conditions) illustrate the human toll: exposure to extreme content, unstable contracts, and pressure to meet performance targets, sometimes for salaries that do not cover basic living expenses. This pressure is also felt in creative domains. Designers and illustrators in African countries report collapsing compensation as generative tools flood the market, while their own creative output is used to train the models that now compete with them. As Casilli notes, creative professionals have been “pulled into the orbit of AI,” both feeding and being displaced by the same systems. The article ultimately highlights a central contradiction of the AI industry: its glamorous narratives depend on a concealed workforce operating under poor conditions. Through ongoing documentation and research, DiPLab aims to ensure that these workers are not forgotten, and that the future of AI is built on fair and transparent labor practices, not disposable digital workers.

We are excited to share an important milestone in our research: the publication of a new article just published in a special issue of the journal Globalizations by DiPLab co-founder Paola Tubaro, introducing and developing the concept of the “dual footprint”: the idea that every digital process leaves both a data work imprint and a material, environmental one. The impacts of artificial intelligence on the natural and social surroundings that supply resources for its production and use have been studied separately so far. Tubaro employs the “dual footprint” as a heuristic device to capture the commonalities and interdependencies between them. She uses two in-depth case studies – international flows of raw materials and of data work services between Argentina and the United States on the one hand, and between Madagascar, France and East Asia on the other. They portray the AI industry as a value chain that spans national boundaries and perpetuates inherited global inequalities. The countries that drive AI development, mostly in the Global North, generate a massive demand for inputs and trigger social costs that, through the value chain, largely fall on more peripheral actors. The arrangements in place distribute the costs and benefits of AI unequally, resulting in unsustainable practices and preventing the upward mobility of more disadvantaged countries. If you want to cite this article: > Tubaro, P. (2025). The dual footprint of artificial intelligence: > environmental and social impacts across the globe. Globalizations, 1–18. > https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2589571 You can access the preprint version here: DualFootprint_12072025Download The dual footprint grasps how the environmental and social dimensions of AI production emanate from similar underlying socio-economic processes and geographical trajectories. This framework helps us better understand the true costs of digitalization and the global inequalities it reproduces. It also constitutes the foundation of SEED – Social and Environmental Effects of Data Connectivity, a new project that investigates how data extraction and material extraction are deeply interconnected. It stems from a collaboration with the Núcleo Milenio FAIR at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and compares data and material infrastructures between Europe and South America.

France Culture’s show Les Pieds sur Terre has devoted a recent episode to what has come to be known as the Siri scandal—the discovery that Apple’s voice assistant recorded private conversations without users’ knowledge. The episode, titled “Hey Siri, are you recording me?” [Dis Siri, est-ce que tu m’enregistres ?, in French], available for replay, features prominently the first-person account of DiPLab’s Thomas Le Bonniec, who partook in this system as part of the large workforce tasked with listening to and annotating Siri recordings. A PhD candidate at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Le Bonniec relates his experience which echoes that of hundreds of workers hired to sift through thousands of audio snippets, often recorded unintentionally: medical information, intimate details, sensitive data, and countless fragments of daily life. This role of data worker is often precarious, outsourced, and hidden. This occupation aligns with that of millions of AI trainers, click workers, and content moderators whose labor quietly powers today’s artificial intelligence systems. Their work sheds light on how AI systems rely on vast amounts of human-powered tasks, often carried out under poor working conditions and with limited recognition. Le Bonniec’s testimony contributes to a growing body of evidence emphasizing that behind every “automated” system stands a global labor force ensuring that AI functions as intended.

RTS, Switzerland’s national television channel, broadcast a report on data annotation platforms between Europe and Africa. As part of the program “A Bon Entendeur,” journalist Linda Bourget interviewed Antonio Casilli, professor at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and co-director of DiPLab. > ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude: generative artificial intelligence is all around us. > But the power of this technology relies heavily on humans. Behind these tools > are millions of workers who are never talked about. Who are they? What do they > do? Why are they invisible? A report from Geneva to Nairobi. > > All these tasks outsourced abroad help improve the artificial intelligence we > use here. But you may have noticed that some of the answers provided by tools > such as ChatGPT and others are very local. To achieve this result, annotators > are also recruited in Switzerland. Another face of the precariousness of AI > workers.

Our DiPLab seminar is delighted to welcome on November 21, 2025, at 3:00 PM CET our friend and collaborator Dr. Martín Tironi, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.. The seminar will be held in person at the Shaker Space of the ISC-PIF (Institut des Systèmes Complexes – Paris Île de France), 113 rue Nationale, 75013 Paris. To register, click on the button below and fill out the form. The seminar is free to attend. Register here GROUNDING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ITS PLANETARY CONDITIONS: AN EXPLORATION AND INTERVENTION ON RARE EARTHS IN CHILE In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of the main socio-technical solutions for tackling the global climate crisis. It is credited with the ability to mitigate its effects through tools for reducing emissions, predictive modeling, and environmental monitoring. However, its expansion is based on a narrative that perpetuates the illusion of an immaterial and deterritorialized technology, capable of emancipating us from the physical world on which it nevertheless depends. This presentation outlines a research-creation program aimed at considering the terrestrial condition of AI, i.e., its material, ecological, and geopolitical anchors. Based on the controversy surrounding rare earth extraction in southern Chile, which places the town of Penco on the map of global extractive tensions, analytical and curatorial operations are explored with the aim of “grounding” AI in its geological, social, and political conditions. Drawing on the notion of “excess” developed by Marisol de la Cadena, the aim is to highlight the need to pay attention to what goes beyond modern classification frameworks. In the intertwining of geological times, mining projects, transformed ecologies, and affected communities, controversies emerge that connect local landscapes to global debates around critical minerals for the digital transition. Martín Tironi is an associate professor and former director of the School of Design at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, as well as director of the Núcleo Milenio Futures of Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR). A sociologist trained at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, he holds a master’s degree from Paris Descartes University (Sorbonne V) and a doctorate from the Centre for Sociology of Innovation at the École des Mines de Paris. In 2018, he was a visiting professor at the Centre for Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, University of London. He currently leads the Fondecyt project “Digital Technologies for Climate Change” (2024–2028) and is principal investigator of the SEED project (Social and Environmental Effects of Data Connectivity, Chile–France, ECOS-ANID), which examines the hybrid ecologies associated with submarine cables and data centers, essential infrastructures for satellite data processing. His work lies at the intersection of design, technology, and ecology, exploring the links between artificial intelligence, digital materialities, and the planetary limits of innovation. He was part of the team that won the Gold Medal at the London Design Biennale 2023 with the Tectonic Resonance project, and is currently presenting, with Manuela Garretón, the installation Hybrid Ecologies: The Planetary Metabolism of AI at the Venice Biennale 2025.

Introducing a new special issue on legal perspectives on artificial intelligence in the French journal Revue de Droit du Travail (Labor Law Review) (Claire Marzo and DiPLab’s Antonio Casilli wrote the extensive introduction—see the end of this post for the preprint version). As part of the special issue, by Dr. Baptiste Delmas, associate professor of law at Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne University and co-principal investigator of the DiPLab/IAA project AI WORLd authored a landmark article examining the importance of due diligence laws in ensuring respect of data workers’ fundamental rights. Delmas_-_IA_et_devoir_de_vigilanceDownload Baptiste Delmas (2025). [AI and Due Diligence] Devoir de vigilance et IA. Revue de Droit du Travail, 10, pp. 600-616. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21ST CENTURY LABORERS Regardless of whether these workers are recruited by digital labor platforms as self-employed workers or access proprietary platforms via subcontractors located around the world, most often in countries where social protections are weaker than elsewhere, the risks of infringing on freedom of association, decent pay, prohibitions on forced or child labour, the right to a healthy and safe working environment, and even respect for personal data are high. Over the last few years, the press have built upon existing scholarship to report on the difficult working conditions experienced by these 21st-century laborers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHO SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE? This due diligence is an important response to the issue—as well as to identify liabilities. This needs to be addressed seriously. By requiring clients of AI solutions, parent companies, and main contractors to publish an annual due diligence plan containing a detailed risk map, sector by sector and country by country, within their subsidiaries and also among subcontractors and suppliers with whom they have established commercial relationships, this duty can effectively enable a prevention policy by preventing or minimizing these risks. Currently, the French law of 27 March 2017 is the only one in force in a European country that has such a broad scope and has already been implemented. A European directive has been adopted in 2024, but it is currently being challenged by the European Commission on a number of grounds. As part of the due diligence process, the largest French companies that directly provide data preparation services for AI vendors and clients – such as Teleperformance and Capgemini – or that purchase data preparation directly or indirectly by purchasing artificial intelligence services that they intend to deploy need to be concerned about the working conditions of these data workers. As of today, only a handful of companies in the AI sector approach this due diligence with genuine rigor — a point that trade unions and workers’ organisations, both within and beyond France, could usefully remind them of. Read the introduction to the special issue here: Marzo Casilli 2025 RDTDownload Claire Marzo & Antonio A. Casilli (2025). [Regulating AI Hidden Labor] Réguler le travail caché de l’intelligence artificielle. Revue de droit du travail, 2025, 09, pp.520-529.

DiPLab continues its collaboration with Valori.it, the Italian editorial hub specializing in ethical finance and sustainable economy issues. After Antonio Casilli’s Interview with the Oblò podcast on the risks and fears associated with artificial intelligence, this month we spoke with Unchained about another facet of automation: cashierless stores. Behind the ‘smart’ shop windows and cameras that recognize products, there is in fact an invisible army of ‘data workers’ – often in India or countries where labor is cheap and union protections are weaker – who correct, label, and sometimes mimic the systems to make the experience seem completely automatic.