AI companies scraped the web. Now they want to learn how you work.

An office in action before the rise of generative AI.

Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis via Getty Images A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.

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AI companies have already scraped much of the web.

Now they're chasing something even more valuable: data that shows how humans actually work.

That's the focus of Business Insider's new series, The AI Data Grab .

This week, we published three stories showing how the race for workplace data is accelerating.

One piece, from Charles Rollet, Tom Carter, and Stephen Council, examines the booming market for company records .

AI firms are offering businesses six- and even seven-figure sums for anonymized Slack messages, emails, presentations, and internal documents.

The goal is to teach AI systems how people solve problems, collaborate, make decisions, and complete long, multi-step tasks.

Those real-world workflows are becoming the fuel for the next generation of AI agents.

Another story, from Melia Robinson, explores how law firms are building AI systems around decades of legal knowledge , turning their own experience into a competitive advantage rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf AI models and tools.

A third piece, by Rya Jetha, reveals how AI companies pay people to record real-world work , such as cooking dinners and packing warehouses, to teach robots how humans perform everyday physical tasks.

Together, these stories point to a major shift in AI development.