Mturk Winds Down, AI Fights

By the Orchestra editors · 4 min read

TL;DR

Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk to new customers, signalling the end of the crowd-work era
Alibaba bans Claude Code internally, flagging it as high-risk software
Australian defence procurement gets a policy rethink around sovereign capability

AI · Worldwide

Amazon winds down Mechanical Turk

Amazon will stop accepting new customers for its Mechanical Turk crowd-work platform. The service underpinned a huge amount of AI training data labelling over the years, so its sunset marks a real shift in how that work gets done.

Alibaba bans Claude Code for employees

Alibaba has classified Anthropic's Claude Code as high-risk software and banned staff from using it. Worth noting for any AU teams evaluating agentic coding tools and their enterprise security posture.

Midjourney pushes Hollywood on AI transparency

Midjourney is trying to force three Hollywood studios to disclose their own AI usage as part of an ongoing legal battle. The case could set precedent for how creative industries handle AI disclosure.

Australian Tech

Defence procurement rethink for local industry

Defence Industry minister Pat Conroy is pushing for a better pathway for Australian companies to become defence primes, while arguing that Australian ownership alone isn't enough to build sovereign capability. The debate has implications for local tech firms eyeing defence contracts.