Sama (formerly Samasource) was founded as a social enterprise with the dual mission of providing high-quality AI training data while creating dignified digital employment in underserved communities. The company employs thousands of annotators in East Africa and operates one of the largest and most experienced annotation workforces in the world.
Core Products
Sama’s Annotation Platform provides high-quality data labeling across image, video, text, and NLP tasks. The company specializes in complex annotation tasks requiring domain expertise, including medical imaging, autonomous driving, and content moderation. RLHF data services have been added to serve generative AI companies needing preference and alignment data.
Competitive Position
Sama differentiates through its ethical labor practices and annotation quality. While many competitors use anonymous crowd workers with minimal oversight, Sama employs a trained, managed workforce with fair wages and career development opportunities. This approach delivers higher quality and consistency, particularly for complex annotation tasks. The company’s social mission also resonates with ESG-conscious enterprise customers.
Recent Developments
Sama has adapted to the generative AI era by expanding into RLHF data services, content moderation annotation, and LLM evaluation tasks. The company gained broader attention when investigations revealed that OpenAI had used Sama workers for content moderation data, raising questions about working conditions for AI annotators. Sama has responded by strengthening worker support programs and expanding mental health resources.
Outlook
Sama’s combination of quality annotation and ethical employment practices positions it well as scrutiny of AI supply chains increases. ESG-focused enterprises increasingly demand responsible data sourcing. The company’s challenge is scaling while maintaining quality and worker welfare, and competing on cost with less ethical alternatives. The growing awareness of AI labor conditions benefits Sama’s positioning.