Smart Home

February 5, 2026, 7:02 AM EST. At her Jharkhand village home, 26-year-old Monsumi Murmu logs in as a content moderator (a worker who reviews user-generated material to enforce platform rules) to classify flagged images and videos. She sees up to 800 items a day, watching to the end so AI can learn from the data. The work fuels a growing, largely female, ghost workers population who operate from rural corners of India. Murmu recalls sleep disturbance and dreams of violence; now she says she feels blank after the worst clips. Researchers say this numbness marks a broader psychosocial toll-chronic anxiety, insomnia and vigilance. In 2021, about 70,000 Indians did data annotation (labeling data to train AI), a market near $250 million. Experts urge stronger support and protections for moderators.