There’s a new deal for homeowners in three cities. Your plumber is free. The price is footage.
I’ve spent this series walking the connected house room by room and arguing that a home robot is the next node in your house cluster . This one is different. The camera isn’t on a device you bought. It’s on the person you let in.
The offer
On October 6, HUMXN, which describes itself as an AI data and training company, announced that it will pay for qualifying plumbing, electrical, HVAC, air-duct cleaning and carpet-cleaning appointments through home-service companies in Minneapolis, Chicago and Miami. Tom’s Hardware picked it up on October 17.
The technician does a normal service call while using “wearable capture technology designed to document the work from the technician’s perspective.” The homeowner pays nothing, the service company gets paid, and the footage becomes a dataset for AI and robotics companies.
The offer page says Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco are coming soon. Large remodels, new construction, roofing and emergency calls aren’t part of it.
Why anyone would pay for this
The reasoning is sound. Robots learning physical work need examples of real people doing it, and that data can’t be scraped off the internet. Founder Thomas Unise put it this way: “Robots need to understand how skilled people interact with the physical world.”
HUMXN says it wants the whole process, not just the finished repair: what the technician examines, what they test, which tools they choose and how they decide the job is done. It picked three cities with different climates on purpose, because a Miami HVAC job and a Minneapolis one look different.
This isn’t a one-off. NPR reported on October 15 that, according to AI industry experts, thousands of people across India have found work over the past year recording themselves doing chores for AI training. One woman they followed records two or three hours a day of folding laundry and mopping, and earns about $120 a month. The same demand is now reaching American homes, just paid in a service call instead of cash.
What they say about privacy
Credit where it’s due: HUMXN puts its privacy terms up front. According to the offer page:
- Recording focuses on the technician’s hands, tools and the equipment being worked on.
- Faces, names, mail, screens and other identifying details that end up in frame are blurred or removed before anything is shared.
- “Your address is never shared.”
- “You decide before anything is scheduled or recorded.”
- You usually need to be home, but you don’t need to be on camera.
- Footage is used “to train and evaluate AI and robotics systems by approved organizations under licence.”
That’s a better starting point than most smart devices I’ve owned. It’s also a set of promises, and promises are worth checking.
Read it like a data deal
When I looked at the house before, the questions were about devices: what sensors, what network, who can reach it. Here the sensor walks in on someone’s head, and the data leaves on purpose. That changes the questions.
A head-mounted camera sees where a person looks. A plumber under the kitchen sink is also looking at the cabinet, the fridge door, the kid’s drawings and whatever’s on the counter. “Blurred before sharing” means a pipeline found it. Pipelines miss things.
So here’s the checklist I’d use before saying yes:
Before the visit
[ ] What can the camera see beyond the work area?
[ ] Can I clear the space first? (Yes. Do it.)
[ ] Will it see the junk drawer?
[ ] Are there microphones, and is audio kept?
[ ] Who removes personal details, a model or a person?
[ ] Is that redaction checked before release?
About the footage
[ ] Who is it licensed to? Can I see the list?
[ ] How long is it kept?
[ ] Can I ask to delete it later?
[ ] What happens to models already trained on it?
During the visit
[ ] Can I stop recording mid-job and still get the repair?
[ ] Does the tech know which rooms are off limits?
That question about trained models matters. Once footage is used to train a model, deleting the clip doesn’t take it back out of the model. As far as I know, that’s true of training data in general, not just this company. If a deletion right exists, it probably only covers future use.
What I’d actually do
I’d probably say yes for a job in the garage or the furnace closet. Those rooms are mostly equipment, and that’s exactly what the footage is for. I’d think harder about the kitchen, the home office or anywhere with screens, paperwork or kids’ stuff in view.
I’d also clear the area first, the same way you’d tidy up before any service call, and I’d put the questions above in writing on HUMXN’s request form. The offer page says they’ll answer before anything is booked. A clear written answer is worth more than the free visit.
Where I land
This is a fair trade for a lot of people. A water heater replacement is real money, and a technician’s hands and tools on camera is a reasonable thing to sell. I like that the people doing the work get paid, and that the company is upfront about what it’s collecting.
Just be clear about what’s being bought. It isn’t a plumbing appointment with a camera attached. It’s a data collection visit that happens to fix your sink. Treat it that way and you can make a good call.
This picks up from the house is full of computers now . The more of the house that becomes data, the more it’s worth asking where the data goes.