Outlier: Can You Make Money Training AI?

If you have a background in anything from writing to chemistry, you may be able to make money remotely through a site called Outlier. Outlier enlists freelance experts all around the world to train Artificial Intelligence models. The site hopes to make AI more accurate and articulate.

The downside? You may be training your digital replacement. And, while the site promises hourly pay from $15 to $50, it appears these estimates are inflated and you might not get paid at all.

What is Outlier?

Outlier connects industry experts in a wide array of fields with companies that are trying to create and educate Artificial Intelligence tools.

How it works

To sign up here, you’ll need a valid ID; a smart phone; a resume; a LinkedIn Profile; and to be of legal age to work in your country.

The site appears to operate around the world. But it has a “working location policy” that allows the site to reject your application if it doesn’t like where you are domiciled. (Our California-based reviewer got booted as a result of this policy, without further explanation. A site spokesman failed to respond to questions about where the site does and doesn’t operate.)

If you get through the initial screening process, you’ll be able to see specific projects available. Projects typically either pay by the hour or the job. You’ll know which upfront and the amount you’ll earn for the project or by the hour.

However, even if the project is in your area of expertise, you’ll be asked to “qualify” for each job. You do this by reviewing the project guidelines and completing “assessment tasks to demonstrate your expertise and understanding.” It’s only after you pass this secondary screening that you can take a paid task to earn money.

Outlier review

Outlier says it enlists freelance experts to help train Artificial Intelligence models in a wide array of fields, languages and cultures. This could involve helping systems learn colloquialisms and proper usages of terms. But it can also involve highly technical answers to science, accounting and math questions.

Indeed, a recent visit to the site found jobs for everyone from artists to civil engineers, writers to physicists. Promised pay ranged from $15 to $50 per hour.

Job requirements

Job requirements typically involve having a college degree in your field of expertise and a strong command of English. Other requirements vary a bit. But all jobs appear to be roughly the same: You’ll be looking at how to ask AI tools questions and evaluating the answers for both accuracy and clarity.

Qualifying

However, even after you qualify to take jobs through this platform, you’ll need to qualify for each individual gig. That qualification process involves reading through the project guidelines and completing “assessment tasks.” This process takes one to two hours, according to Outlier.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear whether this qualification process is just a back-handed way of having experts donate several hours of their time to each project before they even start. There’s no data on the average duration of an Outlier project, so it’s not clear whether this should be a significant deterrent to taking work here. However, several reviewers maintain they spent more “qualifying” for projects than actually getting paid for them.

Other concerns

Outliers terms also say that the site reserves the right to withhold payment for tasks, if they’re inaccurate, inadequate or fail to conform to the project’s guidelines. We’d normally consider this to be site boiler plate. But part of SideHusl.com’s review process is to highlight potential red flags in the terms and then look to see how these play out in real life.

And, that brought us to some disturbing investigative stories about Outlier and its sister companies done by Inc. Magazine. The headline gives you the crux of the story — “It’s a Scam. Accusations of Mass Non-Payment Grow Against Scale AI’s Subsidiary, Outlier AI.”

If you’re considering signing up with Outlier, we’d highly recommend that you read the whole piece here.

The reporter, Sam Blum, has done a variety of additional stories about this site, its affiliates, and its owner.

Freelancer reviews

What do the freelance experts, who work with Outlier, say about working with the platform? Interestingly, recently they’ve said almost exclusively good things. Starting in mid-February of 2025, the site gathered dozens of 5-star reviews on Indeed, almost all by people who describe themselves as “AI Trainer.”

But the site’s overall score is a substandard 2.4 stars. Why? Reviews from earlier in the year — January and early February — are highly critical of the amount of time freelancers need to spend “training” for each assignment, misrepresentations regarding pay, and the availability of jobs. Has the site done a 180-degree turn or is this review whitewashing?

Review whitewashing

We suspect the latter. The way review whitewashing works is this:

Companies can’t force legitimate sites like Indeed to take down bad reviews. But they can overwhelm the system by encouraging (or buying) positive reviews. (Some freelance sites advertise review-writing “jobs” that pay a few dollars per fake review.)

Since many people only look at the most recent reviews, a bunch of positive comments at the top of the line makes sites look good even when they’re sketchy. And, over time, these fake reviews can overwhelm the real reviews, essentially making a bad employer look better.

Complaints

The complaints that we see in reviews (that we believe to be real) are pretty consistent and predictable, given the hints in Outlier’s terms.

• Unpaid training takes up a lot of time, especially when compared to the amount of time you spend doing paid work. And that can dramatically inflate the site’s income claims.
• Outlier intimates that it has plenty of jobs, which would make investing the time to go through the onboarding process worthwhile. But freelancers say assignments are sporadic.
• There’s no one to answer questions about the training materials. And if you misunderstand what’s needed, you get booted from the assignment and aren’t paid at all.

Says one reviewer (from 1/5/2025): “You don’t get paid to do hours of training for a project. And there is no one to answer questions during the training if you don’t understand something. If you misunderstand the training info, you won’t know until you literally fail and get kicked off the project. This work from home isn’t worth the hours you put in to not get paid.”

Recommendations

We believe you can make money here. But the amount you can make per hour may be half of what’s advertised. Given the level of expertise you’re supposed to have to do projects here, we think subject matter experts — even generalists — can do better with other sites.

A site called JustAnswer, for instance, enlists freelancers to answer consumer questions about everything from auto mechanics to finance. Engineers would do better to sign up with SMA Inc. High-end consulting experts should consider Catalant. And if you have any expertise, you may earn good money (though sporadically) through consulting sites like Maven, UserInterviews or Respondent,

If you want to sign up with Outlier, you can find them here.

But here’s what one “subject matter expert” said in December 2024 about working for them: If you’re thinking of working here as a contributor or subject matter expert, your time will probably be better spent doing literally anything else. Learn to paint, or maybe pick up an instrument. You will get more of a reward from that.

What their users say (from Indeed):

At this point, I’ve been with Outlier AI for almost a year. I took the job because the listing said the hourly pay was from $20/hr, it was remote, and work when you want to – which is what I need. However, once I was hired, I quickly discovered that the promised pay was not as advertised. Most of the work is $15-18/hr, rarely is it over that. The work is not steady either – in fact, there have been many times that there was no work available for days, and even weeks, at a time, on any project. Also, for each project they have an onboarding portion to train you how to do those specific tasks (even though it’s almost always the exact same). But the majority of that training is unpaid. I’ve spent hours upon hours of my time doing those trainings with zero compensation.

Hours upon hours of unpaid training
Team Leads are of no help at all and don’t respond to messages
Often put on projects that don’t match my qualifications
Abruptly dismissed from projects without warning
A lot of work 1 week and no work next week

Hours of unpaid training

Expect approx. 5-10 hours of “onboarding” for each job UNPAID. Then most of the jobs have no tasks to do. They then say to onboard to another job. One week I did 24 hours of onboarding UNPAID and not one paid hour came out of it! Job stated $30 an hour then once onboarding complete and are signing a contract they cut pay in HALF!

At this job you will train for a project on your own from online courses with no help from current employees. The training is not enough to learn how to do your job. The training is not paid and takes hours. If you manage to past the test at the end of the training, you’ll be assigned tasks for that project.

There is a limit to how many tasks you can do per day that varies by project, but is usually around two tasks per day. Depending on the project, that means the maximum you can make per day is between $2.50 and $30.You will be switched between projects frequently and have to do unpaid training after unpaid training with little actual paid work available.

Wealth of uncertainty

“I am the letter written in uncertainty.” The quote is from Morrowind, but this company probably has it as its mission statement. Everything is always in flux, and not in a good way. Project specs constantly change, the reviews are subjective, projects suddenly pause or end without warning. Still, they do pay and there are times I’ve made great money with them. It reminds me of the used video games I used to buy that came with no instructions. I knew how to figure them out and win; it’s the same with this. However, I’m tired of feeling like I’m trying to navigate the ocean in an inner tube…I can handle a LOT of uncertainty after being freelance for 20 years. But this is ridiculous.

Poor return

It is a legit website. If you get tasks to do, and you can earn money. The problem is, the tasks, and potentially the payment, you get is not worth the time you spent. Typical scenario is you’ve spent 4 hours training and you are only assigned with 2 tasks worth about USD$20.

One positive aspect of Outlier is learning what is involved in training AI models. The position is completely remote, but you are not guaranteed a certain number of tasks. It’s not uncommon to visit the dashboard and find no available projects for several days.

Bait and switch

Expect to be disrespected if you decide to submit work for this company. I used to like this company quite a lot, but they just baited and switched a few hundred people with project rates that were slashed in half right before Christmas. Previously helpful management members suddenly know nothing, and support will only answer your questions with scripted answers. They will then close the ticket before you can respond. This sort of nonsense has been ramping up over the last couple of months.

If you’re thinking of working here as a contributor or subject matter expert, your time will probably be better spent doing literally anything else. Learn to paint, or maybe pick up an instrument. You will get more of a reward from that.