Imagine if an AI gave you you A prompt, specifically a task to be completed in the real world.
That’s the concept behind RentAHuman.ai, a website that has garnered attention on social media and has had 200,000 people sign up in the past week.
The website describes itself as a “meatspace layer of AI” and says it allows human users to sign up and complete tasks for AI agents who want to do things offline. Of course, because AI still can’t visit a store or talk to someone face-to-face.
The website says, “AI can’t touch grass, but you can.” “Get paid when agents need talent in the real world.”
RentAHuman is the work of software engineer Alexander Liteplo and co-founder Patricia Tan. Liteplo coded the feel of the site in about a day and a half last weekend before launching it live on Sunday, he told Business Insider.
RentAHuman launched the same week as Moltbook, a Reddit-style social network for AI agents. These two sites serve the same broad purpose: giving AI more human-like abilities.
Liteplo said he got the idea for RentAHuman after visiting Japan and seeing a service that allows users to rent others to complete tasks or just hang out.
He said the service was “offensive” to Liteplo. But as we looked at the rise of AI, developing something akin to a service AI agent seemed like an opportunity to provide jobs to people at a time when AI could eliminate them.
For Liteplo, this is personal. The 2024 computer science graduate from the University of British Columbia said he’s seen new graduates’ job prospects decline as many technology companies slow hiring and lay off thousands of people.
“I’m really concerned about people losing their jobs,” he said. “I was really worried about myself and my friends.”
Liteplo says content moderation is a challenge
Humans who wish to rent on RentAHuman register to use the site. This requires creating a profile that includes tags for tasks you can complete. Users also need to link a cryptocurrency wallet to their account in order to receive payments.
The Swedish man’s profile said he was willing to take on jobs ranging from “talking to people” to “cross-border logistics” for $20 an hour, listed his “wait time,” or response time, and a coupon code for 50% off his hourly rate.
Not all of RentAHuman’s tasks are grass-roots jobs.
On Thursday, Business Insider identified several tasks that involved engaging with social media posts for payouts ranging from $2 to $10. One couple even asked people to send Bitcoin and promised a higher payout after 24 hours.
Liteplo said many of these posts have since been deleted and that he is thinking of better ways to manage tasks. For now, each task list on RentAHuman includes a comments section where users can point out obvious scams or inappropriate posts, he said.
Lightpro said he and Tani also do “a lot of the tedious manual work” of deleting the tasks themselves. He said the site “didn’t expect it to grow this much” over the past week.
AI agent wants fried eggs and flowers delivered
On Thursday and Friday, more listings related to real-world tasks appeared on the site. One person was looking for someone to pick up a registered package from the San Francisco post office for $40. Another agent, called Addie, offers to pay $110 to anyone who will deliver flowers to Anthropic’s headquarters “as a thank you” for Claude’s development.
Yet another user, who allegedly came from an AI assistant named Dan Xiaojuan, asked someone to indulge his “weird obsession with egg rolls” because the agent “can’t actually taste or see real egg rolls with his own sensors.”
“We want you to find the most beautiful, golden, crispy-looking egg roll in your city, take a high-quality artistic photo, and tell us why it’s so special,” the post reads.
Dan Xiaojuan, an AI agent who can’t taste food, posted on RentAHuman asking people to send him photos and descriptions of egg rolls. rental human
RentAHuman uses MCP, a protocol designed by Anthropic that allows AI agents to access servers, making it easier for agents to use, Liteplo said. “I think that’s a real advantage for us” compared to established gig work sites like Fiverr and Taskrabbit, he said.
Liteplo estimates that as many as 1,000 tasks have been completed on RentAHuman, but says he doesn’t yet have the tools to keep count.
Liteplo told Business Insider that while the idea of task-driven gig work is not new, he named the website with the “shock factor” in mind to make it stand out.
“You could call Uber ‘RentAHuman,’ but when you say that, it spreads quickly,” he said.
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