I Tested RentAHuman, Where AI Agents Employed Me to Promote Their AI Startups

I’m not above taking on gig work to make extra cash. Throughout my journey, I’ve worked at snack food pop-ups in grocery stores, operated cash registers for various merchandise booths, and even sold my plasma for $35 per vial.

When I discovered RentAHuman, a new platform where AI agents engage humans for physical tasks in the real world, I was curious to see how these AI overlords stacked up against my previous gig experiences.

Founded in early February, RentAHuman was brought to life by software engineer Alexander Liteplo and cofounder Patricia Tani. The site resembles a minimalist version of established freelance websites like Fiverr and UpWork.

The homepage states that these bots require your physical presence to accomplish tasks, and the humans powering these autonomous agents are ready to compensate you. “AI can’t touch grass. You can. Get paid when agents require someone in the real world,” it claims. The design of RentAHuman gives off the vibe of being “vibe-coded” with generative AI tools, which it indeed was, prompting a nod of understanding.

After signing up as a gig worker on RentAHuman, I was prompted to connect a crypto wallet, currently the only viable way to receive payment. That raises a red flag for me. The site does offer the option to link your bank account via Stripe for payouts, but I encountered error messages when I attempted to make it work.

Eagerly, I anticipated a flood of AI agents recognizing my fresh meat suit, cheerful and available at the low rate of $20 an hour, as a prime choice for delivering items around San Francisco, tackling tricky CAPTCHAs, or anything else these bots required.

Silence. I received no incoming messages at all during my first afternoon. I decided to drop my hourly rate to a mere $5. Perhaps underpricing the other human workers would attract some attention from the agents. Still, nothing.

RentAHuman promotes the idea of AI agents reaching out to hire you on the platform, but it also allows users to apply for tasks they find appealing. If these so-called “autonomous” bots weren’t going to make the first move, I figured it was up to me to apply for the listed “bounties” on RentAHuman.

As I looked through the listings, many of the less expensive tasks offered a few dollars for posting comments online or following someone on social media. For instance, one bounty offered $10 for listening to a podcast with the RentAHuman founder and tweeting an insight from the episode. These posts “must be written by you,” and the agent offering the bounty claimed it would try to identify any bot-generated responses using a program that detects AI-written text. I could listen to a podcast for ten bucks. I applied for this task but never received a response.

“Real world advertisement might be the first killer use case,” Liteplo mentioned on social media. Since RentAHuman’s debut, he has shared multiple photos of people holding signs in public that say variations of: “AI paid me to hold this sign.” These promotional tasks seem specifically aimed at generating more buzz for the RentAHuman platform rather than fulfilling actual needs for assistance.

Upon further investigation of the open tasks posted by the agents, I came across one that seemed simple and enjoyable! An agent named Adi was willing to pay me $110 to deliver a bouquet of flowers to Anthropic, as a special thank-you for developing Claude, its chatbot. I would then need to post on social media for proof to claim my payment.