AI firm sends free cleaners to NYC homes, records data

What happened

Micro AGI, an AI robotics firm, launched an initiative called Shift that sends free cleaning and cooking staff to New York City residents' homes. The workers wear camera-equipped caps that record their hands and movements as they work, collecting video data from inside people's apartments. The cleaners are stationed in New York indefinitely and visit around five apartments a day, five days a week.

Why it matters

The company plans to sell the anonymized data it gathers to robotics and AI companies to train robots that can adapt to different homes, kitchens, and tools. Founder Bercan Kilic argues this is more transparent than how social media and websites collect user data without payment or clear disclosure—here, residents knowingly receive free service in exchange for data. However, the initiative raises privacy concerns about recording inside people's homes and what happens to that footage long-term.

What to watch

The company positions data collection as essential because "every kitchen, living room and tool is slightly different," and robots need to learn how "their hands, cameras and environments work together." Success depends on gathering what the founder called "tonnes" of data from real-world environments with varying lighting and conditions—making the scale of the data-gathering operation central to whether the training effort will work.