U.S. delivery platform DoorDash announced on March 19 that it has launched 'Tasks,' a standalone app that allows delivery drivers to earn additional income. This app is a service focused on collecting data to improve artificial intelligence and robot systems.
Delivery personnel perform various missions beyond simple deliveries. For example, this involves filming daily activities or recording audio in specific languages. The captured video and audio data is used to train AI to better understand the real world. Compensation is presented in advance of the task and varies depending on the difficulty and time required.
The core of this service is "securing real-world data." According to Bloomberg, some tasks require specific actions, such as wearing a body cam to film washing dishes. This is a strategy to secure behavioral data from actual environments rather than simple image data. The collected data is planned to be used not only for DoorDash's own models but also to evaluate AI models from various partner companies, including retail, insurance, hotels, and technology firms.
Similar features are also being expanded within existing delivery apps. Delivery drivers can take photos of food to promote menus or take pictures of hotel entrances to supplement navigation data. Additionally, through collaboration with Waymo, the functionality to close the doors of autonomous vehicles has been included.
DoorDash explained that this service will diversify the revenue structure for delivery workers. The strategy is to create new opportunities to transform the physical world into digital data, based on a delivery network of approximately 8 million people.
Similar trends are emerging among competitors as well. Uber is also preparing a feature that allows delivery drivers to upload photos to contribute to AI training. This indicates that the trend of platform labor expanding into AI data production is gaining momentum.
Currently, the Task app is available only in select U.S. regions, excluding California, New York City, Seattle, and Colorado. DoorDash plans to expand the service to more countries and job types in the future.
