When Zeus, a medical student in central Nigeria, returns home from hospital shifts, he transforms his studio apartment into a makeshift motion-capture studio. He straps his iPhone to his forehead, activates a ring light, and records himself performing mundane actions—walking, climbing stairs, reaching, gesturing—uploading the videos to earn between $5 and $15 per submission. Zeus is one of thousands of gig workers globally hired by robotics companies to generate training data for humanoid robots, a labor arrangement that has largely escaped regulatory scrutiny. The workers, scattered across Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines, and other low-wage nations, are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, a designation that sidesteps payroll taxes, benefits, and labor protections that would otherwise apply under U.S. or European employment law.