“Just Send us Pictures of Your feet”: Consent and Biometric Extraction in the AI Supply Chain
The boundary between labour and personal resource has disappeared: the human body becomes raw material.
by James Mojez Oyange
Cite as:
Oyange, J. M. (2026). ‘“Just Send us Pictures of Your Feet”: Consent and Biometric Extraction in the AI supply chain’. In: M. Miceli, A. Dinika, and C. Salim Wagner (eds.) Data Workers‘ Inquiry. Creative Commons BY 4.0. https://data-workers.org/mojez
This piece can be used, shared, and adapted with proper attribution.
My name is James Oyange, though many of my comrades in the tech space know me as Mojez. For years, I’ve worked in the “invisible” levels of the online space as a TikTok content moderator and a data worker. My metamorphosis from worker to advocate began not in the classroom, but in my own living room, when I observed my college-aged cousin. I watched him make repeated faces to his webcam, smiling, then frowning, then tilting his head, sending biometric data to a shared drive for a small fee. This unsettling new normal of having personal attributes used for AI training made me wonder about the real cost of this labour and where the sensitive data we give over so readily ends up.
This made me want to try to track down my own digital footprint. I found that firms generally deny individual requests for data access unless there is legal pressure behind it. This realization led me to obtain my qualification as a GDPR Data Protection Officer (CDPO), which equipped me with the vocabulary to articulate the systemic violations I had witnessed: the abandonment of data minimisation and the absence of any actual informed consent. This inquiry is the result of that journey, combining my first-hand experience in the platform work trenches with professional skills to investigate how the „invisible workforce“ of AI in the Global South is being turned into a processed commodity.
Through interviews with nine comrades across Kenya, from the high-pressure environments of Nairobi to the informal settlements of Kibra and the quiet retreats of Machakos, I have documented a pattern where the human body is treated as raw material. Whether it is Mophat being asked for photos of his feet, Ruth documenting her child’s sleep, or Willis selling his facial angles for cents, the boundary between labour and personal resource has disappeared. This work serves as the foundation for the Data Safety Alliance (DSA), an organization I founded to ensure that the workers powering the AI revolution are no longer invisible datasets, but informed advocates capable of defending their own dignity and privacy.
About the Author
James "Mojez" Oyange
James Oyange is a professional advocate who spent years navigating the high-pressure, invisible layers of the tech industry as a TikTok content moderator and data labeller. He entered the platform accountability advocacy space after witnessing the invasive “new norm” of biometric harvesting, in which sensitive facial traits were collected from his family members and colleagues for little remuneration under the guise of AI training. Having seen directly how difficult it is for workers to access their own information or for employers to provide clear answers to questions about their privacy, James committed himself to studying the legal systems necessary to contest these systemic infractions.
Today, James is a GDPR Certified Data Protection Officer (CDPO) and Director at Data Safety Alliance (DSA). Under his leadership, DSA has been dedicated to educating, training and lobbying for the rights of AI and platform workers, particularly those in the Global South, whose labour is often exploited in a legal vacuum. James’ aim is to turn the human chain behind modern artificial intelligence from an invisible ‘ghost worker’ assembly line into an informed class of advocates who can protect their dignity and data, working with labour unions, digital rights advocates, and legal experts.
