AI companies want to harvest improv actors’ skills to train AI on human emotion
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If you've got strong creative instincts, the ability to authentically portray emotion, and are capable of staying true to a character's voice throughout a scene, there's a job listing calling for your experience.
The catch: You won't be performing in a theater, a film studio, or an underground performance space. You'd be using your talents to train an AI model for "one of the leading AI companies," according to the open role posted by Handshake, a company that provides training data to OpenAI and other labs.
Handshake AI is one of a handful of companies of its kind, scrambling to provide more and more niche or specific training data to A …
Read the full story at The Verge.
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AI OpenAI AI companies want to harvest improv actors’ skills to train AI on human emotion The job requires the “ability to recognize, express, and shift between emotions in a way that feels authentic and human.” by Hayden Field Mar 15, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images AI OpenAI AI companies want to harvest improv actors’ skills to train AI on human emotion The job requires the “ability to recognize, express, and shift between emotions in a way that feels authentic and human.” by Hayden Field Mar 15, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC Hayden Field is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets. If you’ve got strong creative instincts, the ability to authentically portray emotion, and are capable of staying true to a character’s voice throughout a scene, there’s a job listing calling for your experience. The catch: You won’t be performing in a theater, a film studio, or an underground performance space. You’d be using your talents to train an AI model for “one of the leading AI companies,” according to the open role posted by Handshake, a company that provides training data to OpenAI and other labs. Handshake AI is one of a handful of companies of its kind, scrambling to provide more and more niche or specific training data to AI labs in order to feed the models. AI models are often described as “jagged,” meaning they’re typically great at some surprisingly complex tasks but fail deeply at some simple ones. AI companies are trying to fix the gaps in their models’ knowledge with specialized data labeling, and companies like Handshake, Mercor, and Scale AI have adjusted accordingly, hiring professionals in a wide range of industries. Handshake’s demand for training data tripled last summer, as The Verge reported in December , and the company surpassed a $150 million run rate in November, scrambling to keep up with demand. Handshake and ...
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