Garment workers in India were asked to wear head-mounted cameras while working, recording their movements as part of a growing effort to collect “egocentric data” used to train AI systems and humanoid robots.

Companies say this first-person footage is essential for teaching robots how humans perform physical tasks, especially in factories and warehouses where automation is expanding rapidly.

The data is being gathered at large scale in India because of its huge industrial workforce and low costs, with footage often collected without direct payment or clear consent from individual workers.

While firms argue the data is collected through factory agreements, critics say workers are left out of the value created as their movements are turned into commercial AI training datasets, The Guardian has reported.

The practice has raised concerns about surveillance, privacy, and fairness, as workers see their labor used to build technologies that could eventually replace them.