By Mufy Pachorawala, founder of getAIwork · Last updated: September 10, 2026
Key facts
- The AI community site is telusinternational.ai. The plausible-looking
telusdigital.aidoes not resolve at all, so guides pointing there are sending you nowhere - TELUS Corporation completed the buyout of the shares it did not own at US$4.50 per share, about US$539 million, closing October 31, 2025. The company is no longer listed
- Of 72 live postings on September 10, 2026, only about four or five are classic rater roles. Roughly forty are 2026-created domain expert roles
- Search Quality Rater is no longer a TELUS job title. The equivalent posting is Content Reviewer, United States, at $0.2333 per completed task, an estimated $14 per hour
- TELUS publishes hourly ranges for the new expert roles, up to $120 per hour for a PhD Data Partner in Law, but publishes no rate at all for Online Data Analyst, Media Search Analyst or Personalized Internet Ads Assessor
- TELUS International AI, Inc. disclosed a data breach affecting contributors and applicants, detected November 2025 and notified in April 2026
- For comparison, the free getAIwork board lists 582 paid AI platform programmes among 1,521 live listings at getaiwork.com/board/
Is it TELUS International or TELUS Digital, and where do you actually sign up?
Both, annoyingly, and the distinction matters when you are looking for the right website. TELUS International launched the TELUS Digital brand on September 18, 2024, and said at the time there was no change to the legal name or the trading symbol. The contributor privacy policy still names TELUS International AI, Inc. as the contracting entity. So the brand on the marketing is TELUS Digital and the name on your paperwork is TELUS International AI.
The URL trips people up more. The AI community is live at www.telusinternational.ai, and the page title on it reads TELUS Digital AI. Meanwhile telusdigital.ai does not resolve. Several articles have helpfully corrected readers to the wrong address.
The bigger corporate change is that TELUS Digital is no longer publicly traded. TELUS Corporation made a non-binding approach at US$3.40 a share in June 2025, signed a definitive agreement at US$4.50 a share in September 2025 for roughly US$539 million, held the shareholder vote on October 27, and closed on October 31, 2025. TELUS cited around $150 million in expected annual efficiencies from AI-driven automation and business simplification, which is worth holding in mind when you read the section on project churn below.
What roles does TELUS Digital actually offer now?
Not the ones you are probably searching for. Of 72 live postings on September 10, 2026, the classic rater family is down to a handful: Online Data Analyst for the United States, a Spanish-speaking variant, Media Search Analyst, Personalized Internet Ads Assessor, and Content Reviewer.
Almost everything else created in 2026 is expert work: Global AI Expert and Evaluator, Machine Learning Expert, RLHF Strategist, AI Safety and Policy Expert, Cultural Safety and Red-Teaming Expert, Deepfake Defense and Digital Forensics Expert, Legal Content Expert, Clinical and Medical AI Expert, Chemistry and Lab Data Expert, PhD Data Partner in Law, and about thirty more in the same shape, each with an Intermediate tier underneath it.
One specific correction, because it is the search term half the internet is still optimising for: Search Quality Rater is not a TELUS job title any more. Nothing in the 72 live postings uses it. The nearest equivalent is Content Reviewer, United States, created in July 2026, and it is also the only rater posting that publishes a rate.
The direction of travel is the same one we described in our RLHF jobs guide. Generic rating is commoditising and moving to whoever is cheapest, while the money moves toward people with a credential the model cannot fake.
How much does TELUS Digital pay?
Here is the awkward asymmetry nobody has written about. TELUS now publishes hourly ranges on its own job board for the new expert roles, and publishes nothing at all for the rater roles people actually search for.
| Role | Published rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PhD Data Partner, Law | From $120 per hour | Highest published figure on the board |
| PhD Data Partner, Economics, Finance, Accounting | From $100 per hour | |
| Global AI Expert and Evaluator | $45 to $160 per hour | |
| Machine Learning Expert, Full-Stack AI Logic Expert | $25 to $50 per hour | |
| Most Expert roles (legal, clinical, robotics, RLHF) | $20 to $50 per hour | |
| Most Intermediate tier roles | $10 to $25 per hour | |
| Content Reviewer, United States | $0.2333 per task, estimated $14 per hour | The successor to search quality rating |
| Online Data Analyst (US) | Not published | |
| Media Search Analyst (US) | Not published | |
| Personalized Internet Ads Assessor (US) | Not published | |
| Pet and Owner Movement Project | $125 to $160 per unit | Data collection, not rating |
| Motion Recording Project | $2 to $3 per unit |
Figures exactly as published by TELUS on its own job board, retrieved September 10, 2026. Estimated hourly figures are the poster’s estimates and depend on task volume, quality and productivity. Nothing here is a promise of earnings.
TELUS states the pay condition in its own words on the Content Reviewer posting: Compensation is based on tasks completed and project availability. That sentence is doing a lot of work. Per-task pay with variable availability means the estimated hourly figure is a ceiling under good conditions, not a floor.
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Who can apply, and what do you need?
Requirements are role and country specific, and TELUS states them in each posting. For the US Personalized Internet Ads Assessor role the conditions are: full professional proficiency in English, residency in the USA for the last 3 consecutive years, familiarity with current and historical business, media, sport, news, social media and cultural affairs, and active use of email and social media.
Residency length varies. The Canadian Online Data Analyst posting asks for 5 consecutive years. Do not assume the US figure applies to you.
On hardware, the same posting asks for broadband, a personal computer with antivirus software, and a smartphone running Android 4.1 or iOS 8 or higher, plus a Barcode Scanner application installed on your smartphone to complete certain tasks. The stated versions are ancient, which is a decent clue about how recently that copy was reviewed. So is the fact that it still asks applicants to be an active user of Google+, a product that shut down in 2019.
Two rules that get people removed. Only one member per household may participate, and TELUS says that if more than one person from the same household is found in the ads rating program, all associated accounts are removed. And the engagement is explicitly independent contractor: TELUS states it is not and should not be construed as creating an employment relationship.
Hours caps are role specific rather than universal. The US Ads Assessor posting says up to 20 hours a week. The newer expert postings say the opposite, promising no predetermined hours or shift requirements. Do not carry the 20-hour figure across roles.
How hard is the TELUS qualification exam?
The process TELUS publishes is: apply, create a contributor account, receive guidelines and learning materials, sit an open book qualification exam that determines your suitability, complete ID verification, then get access to live tasks subject to project availability. On timing it says only that you complete it in a specific timeframe but at your own convenience.
Three things people search for constantly, and here is the honest state of each. How many attempts do you get? TELUS does not say, anywhere in its 72 live postings or on its public pages. Numbers circulate in forums; we could not verify any of them, so we are not going to repeat one. Is the exam paid? TELUS does not say either way. Its pay language is uniformly about tasks completed, which implies unpaid study, but implication is not a statement. How long does it take? Not stated. Workers commonly report guideline documents running to 150 to 200 pages, which is a worker report rather than a company figure.
The useful advice is the boring kind. Open book means the guidelines are the exam, and most people who fail have skimmed them. Set aside real time, keep the document open, and answer the question the guidelines answer rather than the one your instincts answer. The same discipline applies to almost every platform in this category, which we go through in AI training jobs with no experience.
How does TELUS pay contributors?
Through Hyperwallet, a PayPal company, on a TELUS-branded portal that TELUS calls the Pay Portal. Payout options listed are bank account transfer, PayPal and a virtual Visa prepaid card. TELUS states that bank transfers can take up to three business days and that PayPal transfers should arrive within about 30 minutes.
On fees it says only that a transfer fee may apply and that the recipient bank may impose processing charges deducted from your balance. It does not publish the amounts. It also does not publish a pay cycle anywhere we could find, which is a real gap: you cannot tell from TELUS’s own pages when in the month you get paid. Treat any specific schedule you read elsewhere as unverified.
The 2026 contributor data breach
This belongs in a review of a platform that asks you to upload identity documents, so here it is, carefully sourced and with the uncertain parts labelled.
TELUS International AI, Inc., doing business as TELUS Digital, filed a data breach notice with the Washington State Attorney General dated April 17, 2026. According to that filing the incident was detected on November 12, 2025 and personal data exposure was confirmed on March 18, 2026. A Texas Attorney General filing followed in August 2026. Reported scale across those two filings is at least 9,968 individuals, of whom 9,343 were Washington residents and 625 Texas residents. A nationwide total is not something we can verify.
The Washington notice describes the exposed data as name and contact information and date of birth, plus limited health information and financial account numbers in a small number of instances. A plaintiff-side law firm’s filing separately alleges Social Security numbers and government-issued ID numbers were involved. That broader claim is not in the official Washington notice and we treat it as unverified. Reporting on who was affected describes people who participated in research studies through TELUS Digital or who signed up to provide services to the company, which means contributors and applicants.
One corroborating detail: the AI community platform’s own published front-end configuration includes a data breach notification banner setting, so the platform itself is or was serving a breach notice to users.
None of this makes TELUS unusual. Breaches happen to large companies constantly. It is here because a review that tells you to upload a passport and a selfie owes you the disclosure, and because no other review of this platform mentions it.
Is TELUS Digital worth applying to?
The worker reports are consistent with that. On Indeed through 2025 and 2026, rater-role reviewers describe being limited to around 10 hours a week against an advertised ceiling of 20, task availability fluctuating, accounts suspended for review without warning, guidelines changing constantly, no pay progression over years at the same $14 an hour, and support that never seems to involve a person. Those are individual claims rather than verified facts, and they are strikingly uniform.
If you want the wider picture on where this kind of work is going, our AI training platforms hiring now roundup tracks open intake, the Appen review covers a company going through a very similar transition, and Outlier alternatives covers the platforms most people weigh against each other.
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Frequently asked questions
Is TELUS International the same as TELUS Digital?
Yes. TELUS International launched the TELUS Digital brand on September 18, 2024, with no change to the legal name at the time. The entity named in the contributor privacy policy is still TELUS International AI, Inc., which is why the old name persists in contracts and filings.
What is the correct TELUS AI community website?
www.telusinternational.ai. The page title reads TELUS Digital AI. The address telusdigital.ai does not resolve, so any guide pointing there is sending you to a dead host.
Is TELUS Digital still a public company?
No. TELUS Corporation completed the acquisition of the shares it did not already own on October 31, 2025, at US$4.50 per share and roughly US$539 million in total. The shares were delisted from the TSX and NYSE and the company applied to stop being a reporting issuer in Canada.
How much does TELUS pay raters?
For most rater roles it does not publish a figure. The one exception is the Content Reviewer role for the United States, which states $0.2333 per completed task with an estimated $14 per hour. Online Data Analyst, Media Search Analyst and Personalized Internet Ads Assessor all publish no rate. The newer expert roles do publish ranges, from $10 per hour at the intermediate tier up to $120 per hour for a PhD Data Partner in Law.
How many attempts do you get at the TELUS qualification exam?
TELUS does not state a number anywhere on its public pages or in its current job postings. Figures circulate in worker forums but we could not verify any of them against a TELUS source, so treat them as unconfirmed.
Is the TELUS qualification exam paid?
TELUS does not say either way. Its pay language throughout is that compensation is based on tasks completed and project availability, which implies study and exam time is your own, but the company has published no statement on it.
Does TELUS still hire search quality raters?
Not under that title. Search Quality Rater does not appear anywhere in TELUS’s 72 live postings as of September 10, 2026. The closest equivalent is Content Reviewer, United States, created in July 2026.
Was there a TELUS data breach?
Yes. TELUS International AI, Inc., doing business as TELUS Digital, filed a breach notice with the Washington State Attorney General dated April 17, 2026, describing an incident detected on November 12, 2025 and confirmed on March 18, 2026. Filings in Washington and Texas cover at least 9,968 individuals. The official notice lists name, contact details and date of birth, with limited health information and financial account numbers in a small number of cases. Broader claims about Social Security numbers come from a plaintiff-side filing and are unverified.
Mufy Pachorawala · Founder, getAIwork
My AI scans thousands of AI-job posts (40,786 screened so far) and I personally approve every listing before it reaches the board. I write these articles by the same rules: pay quoted only as listed, and no income promises. Read our editorial rules.
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