Amazon to Halt New Customer Sign-ups for Its Mechanical Turk Platform
AMZN•Amazon announced it will stop onboarding new customers to its Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform starting immediately, though existing requesters will retain access. This move ends open access to a service launched in 2005 and could slow data-labeling segment growth within AWS.
1. Service Change Announcement
Amazon announced on July 5 that it will stop accepting new requesters for Mechanical Turk effective immediately, while maintaining service for existing accounts. The platform will allow current users to continue posting tasks, but no new customer registrations will be processed.
2. Mechanical Turk Background
Launched in 2005, Mechanical Turk has enabled requesters to outsource microtasks across diverse categories such as data labeling and survey responses. Over its history, the service has processed billions of Human Intelligence Tasks and facilitated third-party research and development work.
3. Integration with AWS AI Offerings
Mechanical Turk supports data-preparation workflows tied to Amazon SageMaker and other AWS AI services, providing human-in-the-loop labeling for machine learning models. Restricting new sign-ups may limit pipeline expansion for developers relying on the platform for ground-truth data.
4. Financial and Strategic Implications
Analysts note that limiting user growth could weigh on revenue from AWS’s data-labeling segment, though the service represents a modest portion of AWS sales. This move may reflect a strategic shift toward more integrated, enterprise-focused AI offerings rather than open-access crowdsourcing.
