Gig AI training is a new emerging category of work, and it will grow substantially. From Cape Town to Chicago, thousands of people are now micro-licensing their biometric identities and intimate data to train the next generation of AI. But this new gig economy comes with trade-offs. In exchange for a few dollars, its trainers are fueling an industry that may eventually render their skills obsolete, while leaving some of them vulnerable to a future of deepfakes, identity theft and digital exploitation that they are only just beginning to understand. Researchers estimate AI companies will run out of fresh high-quality text to train on as soon as 2026. While some labs have resorted to feeding back the synthetic data their AI generates, such a recursive process can lead models to produce error-filled slop that causes their collapse.