OpenAI and its partner Handshake AI are reportedly requesting that third-party contractors provide actual work samples from their previous and current employment, as detailed in a recent report. This initiative seems to align with a broader trend among AI firms, which are engaging contractors to produce high-quality training data. The goal is to enhance their models' capabilities, potentially enabling greater automation of white-collar tasks.

According to a company presentation, OpenAI specifically asks contractors to outline tasks they have handled in other roles and to submit examples of "real, on-the-job work" they have "actually done." Acceptable submissions include tangible outputs such as Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint slides, Excel files, images, or code repositories—essentially the actual files, not just summaries.

The company advises contractors to remove any proprietary or personally identifiable information before uploading these materials and directs them to a ChatGPT tool called "Superstar Scrubbing" for assistance. Despite these precautions, intellectual property attorney Evan Brown has raised concerns, noting that any AI lab adopting this method is taking significant legal risks. He emphasized that such an approach heavily relies on contractors' judgment to determine what constitutes confidential information, requiring a substantial degree of trust.

An OpenAI spokesperson has declined to comment on the matter.