After training as an Air Cargo Agent at Nairobi Aviation College, I dreamed of working in aviation logistics. But after years of unemployment, I joined Sama in Nairobi, labeling data for Meta. That was my entry into the global AI supply chain. From there, I stumbled into another kind of digital work,  chat moderation, a job advertised as simple online messaging but which turned out to be something else entirely.

Chat moderators are hired by companies such as Texting Factory, Cloudworkers, and New Media Services to impersonate fabricated identities, often romantic or sexual, and chat with paying users who believe they’re forming genuine connections. The goal is to keep users engaged, meet message quotas, and never reveal who you really are. It’s work that demands constant emotional performance: pretending to be someone you’re not, feeling what you don’t feel, and expressing affection you don’t mean.

Over time, I began to suspect that I wasn’t just chatting with lonely users. I was also helping to train AI companions, systems designed to simulate love, empathy, and intimacy. Many of us believed we were simultaneously impersonating chatbots and teaching them how to replace us. Every joke, confession, and “I love you” became data to refine the next generation of conversational AI.

This project sheds light on a workforce that remains invisible yet essential, the people whose emotions fuel algorithms that pretend to feel. It is a call for recognition, dignity, and transparency in an industry that profits from the pretense of connection while erasing the humans behind it.