AI agents can now complete 16 percent of freelance jobs at pro quality, up from 2.5 percent eight months ago

Jul 2, 2026

Nano Banana Pro prompted by THE DECODER

The Remote Labor Index measures how often AI agents complete paid freelance projects at professional quality. In eight months, the top automation rate has more than quadrupled.

The Remote Labor Index (RLI) tracks how often AI agents can finish real, commercially valuable freelance jobs at a quality level a paying client would actually accept. The benchmark covers areas like 3D and CAD, architecture, graphic design, video and animation, audio, data analysis, and web apps. It includes 240 projects worth a combined $144,000, sourced from 358 verified freelancers. Human evaluators at the Center for AI Safety score each result against a gold standard created by a paid professional. The RLI was developed together with Scale Labs.

The key metric is the automation rate, meaning the share of projects where the AI's work is rated at least as good as a human's.