technology
Hollywood Writer Describes AI Training Contracts as Primary Income Source
A screenwriter who creates shows for Paramount, Hulu and the BBC has completed 20 AI training contracts across five platforms in eight months. The individual earns between $52 and $70 per hour rating chatbot responses, annotating images and videos, and conducting safety tests.
May 11, 6:00 AM·2m read1 source
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A Hollywood screenwriter and showrunner has taken on AI training contracts as a main source of income after traditional television work slowed. The writer, who operates under platform names such as ri611 and h924092b12ee797f, evaluates chatbot tone, identifies patterns in furniture images, removes strangers from group photos, annotates videos with precise timestamps for events like a dog barking or a balloon popping, and participates in red-team safety testing.
Tasks have included generating anime sex scenes, simulating decapitations, prompting large language models for instructions on homemade bombs, and creating invitations to a simulated reprise of the January 6 event at the White House. The individual has worked for companies including Mercor, Outlier, Task-ify, Turing, Handshake and Micro1.
In the writer's primary career, created prime-time television series appear on Paramount, Hulu and the BBC.
In 2023, Hollywood writers and actors went on strike for nearly five months, partly to address concerns over studios using artificial intelligence to replace human roles. After the strike concluded, industry momentum did not fully recover. In early 2025, following a producer's default on a six-figure payment owed for creating a television show, the writer began seeking additional income.
A comment in an unofficial Writers Guild of America Facebook group mentioned Mercor paying $150 an hour for writers, prompting the first application. The onboarding process required 10 job applications, 20 unpaid hours of tests, and an interview with an AI recruiter.
The writer started in September 2025 as a generalist data annotator at $52 an hour, later advancing to an expert role at $70 an hour.
Initial assignments involved reviewing conversations between users and large language model assistants, grading responses from 1 to 5 according to a provided guideline, and writing justifications. User prompts often addressed personal concerns such as whether feelings were justified, if behavior was acceptable, or if the user was lovable.
