How Big Tech is harnessing the data of Indian factory workers to train robots

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‘A butterfly will still be beautiful’: Ruskin Bond, 92 today, writes about his wartime childhood

How Big Tech is harnessing the data of Indian factory workers to train robots

Why many villages oppose a programme that rewards companies that plant trees

From the memoir: Mathematician and writer Manil Suri on his childhood in a crumbling Bombay flat

Modi’s refusal to take query from Norwegian journalist sparks debate on media’s role in democracy

Bombay HC quashes FIRs against ex-DGP for alleged bid to frame Fadnavis, Shinde in extortion case

Umar Khalid denied interim bail in Delhi riots conspiracy case, court says grounds unreasonable

A new book details innovations in literature, art, music, and architecture in the interwar era

Iodine deficiency is slowly rising again due to dietary preferences, salt intake concerns

10

A new book argues women must think of themselves as ‘providers’ and not just financially independent

The workers in the viral video wearing a device that records hand movements while stitching a garment.

Design | Vidhi Awasthi

In April, a video of Indian factory workers went viral. It showed the workers sewing garments while wearing white bands around their heads fitted with a camera.<br>The video garnered hundreds of thousands of views and was picked up by several news outlets that speculated about what use the footage of the hand movements of the workers could be put to. “Are factory workers training AI to replace themselves?” CNN asked.<br>The reports did not specify where the cameras had been deployed and by whom.<br>Scroll was able to identify the factory where workers were wearing the head-mounted devices. It is the Gurugram unit of Pearl Global Industries Limited, an apparel manufacturer with a presence across 10 countries.<br>“We were supposed to wear the device from 10 am to 4 pm,” one of the workers at the factory told us. “They [the executives] said that they wanted to find out what we were doing during our shifts and for how much time.”<br>Similar devices were used in the factories of Ken India, a textile manufacturer based in Ichalkaranji, Maharashtra, in March 2026, where they seem to have been used for a different purpose.<br>In a post on Linkedin, Ken India said that the hardware belonged to a start-up called Egolab.AI.<br>Founded in January 2026 by two teenagers in Maharashtra, Egolab.AI calls itself “India's largest first-person POV Data Aggregator”.<br>In its company documents, it states that it collects “high-quality, labour-sourced egocentric video footage” from factory workers using “lightweight cameras”.<br>Egocentric is the term used for data captured from a first-person perspective.<br>This data is then “aggregated, processed, and packaged into datasets” for “global AI companies building robotics, computer vision, and autonomous systems”. These companies include Tesla, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI, Egolab claims in a document.<br>In March, Egolab was acquired by Build Artificial Intelligence Inc., or Build AI, a firm registered in Delaware, United States. Its India arm is based in Bengaluru but its founders, most of them in their late teens or early 20s, live in San Francisco. It describes itself as the “largest egocentric data collection effort in history”.<br>These firms are positioning themselves to profit from the growing demand for data to train robots. According to one estimate, over the next two to three...