Gig workers fighting deactivations on apps like Uber and Instacart “say they have a new advocate: AI”, Business Insider reported on November 8. Workers who want back on the apps must contact the company and start an arbitration process, the report says, and some are using chatbots such as ChatGPT to help them negotiate.
Business Insider describes six ways workers used chatbots in their cases: writing evidence reports, estimating lost wages, timing a reply to the company, asking about pro bono legal help, drafting a letter that cites Uber’s driver contract to begin arbitration, and choosing who to email. By our tally of the same report, that is six worker-side uses against one disclosed use of AI on the platform side, where Uber customer service employees often use AI to write responses to drivers’ messages.
Business Pill · AI Agents Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on AI agents. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss gig work, Uber or Instacart.
The key insight: Business Insider reports that deactivated Uber and Instacart workers are using ChatGPT to write evidence reports, estimate lost wages and draft letters that cite Uber’s driver contract to begin arbitration. The report describes six worker-side uses of chatbots and one disclosed platform-side use, Uber customer service employees using AI to write replies to drivers, by our tally; Instacart says final deactivation decisions are always reviewed by a human.
A deactivated Instacart worker told Business Insider they are using ChatGPT to challenge the company’s claim that they did not follow the correct route to deliver an order. The worker said they used the chatbot to write evidence reports and estimate how much they had lost in wages since Instacart removed them from the app earlier this year.
The same worker has consulted the chatbot on when to send the next response to Instacart, and on pro bono legal advice. “ChatGPT said to hold off on that for now”, the worker told Business Insider. “We’re gonna see if we can get a lawyer”.
An Uber driver in Tennessee told Business Insider that they consulted ChatGPT after the company deactivated their account without a clear explanation. After a back-and-forth with the chatbot, the driver had a letter that cited Uber’s driver contract and asked to begin arbitration proceedings. The chatbot also suggested emailing Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, not only the generic address for arbitration requests, the driver said. About a week later the driver could access the account again: “I followed AI, and I guess it worked”.
On Reddit pages for gig workers, some users have posted stories about using ChatGPT to write letters to Uber Eats and DoorDash requesting reinstatement, and some wrote that the messages worked, the report says.
Uses of AI described in Business Insider’s November 8 report: six by workers (evidence reports, lost-wage estimates, timing a reply, asking about pro bono legal help, a letter citing the driver contract, choosing who to email) and one disclosed on the platform side (Uber customer service using AI to write replies to drivers). The six-to-one count is our tally of this one report, not a measure across the industry.
What Was Posted on X
JUST IN: Uber and Instacart workers are turning to AI to fight account bans and get their jobs back
Kalshi posted this on 8 November, summarising Business Insider’s report that Uber and Instacart workers are turning to AI to fight account deactivations. The report’s evidence is individual workers’ accounts and Reddit posts; it gives no figures on how often AI-drafted appeals succeed.
What the Platforms Said
Spokespeople for Uber and Instacart did not comment directly on workers using AI to fight deactivations, Business Insider reports. An Uber spokesperson said the company uses “data and facts” to evaluate claims “regardless of how an appeal is submitted”. An Instacart spokesperson said the company does not “take deactivation lightly” and that “Final deactivation decisions are always reviewed by a human”.
Uber and Instacart have in the past declined to say what role AI plays in the initial decision to deactivate workers, the report says, and Uber said appeals of those decisions are reviewed by “a real person”.
The deactivation path as Business Insider describes it: an account is removed, sometimes without a full explanation; the worker contacts the company, and some use ChatGPT to write letters; arbitration follows under the workers’ terms, where lawyers are often hesitant; and Instacart says final deactivation decisions are always reviewed by a human. Uber says it evaluates claims with data and facts regardless of how an appeal is submitted.
Why Workers Reach for Chatbots
As independent contractors, Uber drivers and Instacart shoppers have few options when they take on the companies, Business Insider reports: the companies usually have wide latitude in terminating them, and lawyers are often hesitant to represent them because of the arbitration requirements in the companies’ terms.
Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Business Insider that AI is still beneficial to gig workers who have few other options. “They’re not locked out of being able to defend themselves because they lack the financial means to hire a very good labor attorney”, Bruno said. Bruno added that workers still have to make a persuasive argument tailored to the arbitrator: “I don’t think you could just spit that out of Copilot or Claude”.
The report also notes the risks: AI-generated briefs or arguments in a legal setting can introduce errors and undermine credibility.
As we read the report, the chatbot is doing paralegal work for workers who, Business Insider says, often cannot get a lawyer because of the arbitration requirements in the companies’ terms.
As we read the companies’ statements, neither Uber nor Instacart objects to AI-written appeals: Uber says it uses data and facts regardless of how an appeal is submitted.
As we read it alongside our earlier coverage, the same general-purpose tools now sit on both sides of the platform: Uber has rolled ChatGPT out to its own staff, and the workers it deactivates are using ChatGPT to answer.
Robert Bruno, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, to Business Insider
“They’re not locked out of being able to defend themselves because they lack the financial means to hire a very good labor attorney”
Three Implications
FOR PLATFORMSUber and Instacart have in the past declined to say what role AI plays in the initial decision to deactivate workers, Business Insider reports, while saying appeals and final decisions are reviewed by people.
FOR WORKERS Robert Bruno told Business Insider that workers still have to make a persuasive argument tailored to the arbitrator, and the report notes that AI-generated arguments can introduce errors.
FOR WHAT TO WATCH The report gives no figures on how many workers use chatbots or how often appeals succeed, so the scale of the practice is not established.
The essay says “With fewer than one in a hundred individual users on the agentic surface, the conversational interface still overwhelmingly owns the consumer base.”
As we read it, the workers in Business Insider’s report fit that picture: they use the conversational chatbot, not an agent, and do the filing themselves. The essay does not discuss gig work or deactivations.
What Is Not Established
Business Insider’s accounts come from individual workers and Reddit posts; the report gives no figures for how many workers use chatbots, how many deactivations Uber or Instacart make, or how often appeals succeed. Whether the AI-drafted letter caused the Tennessee driver’s reinstatement is not established; the driver said, “I guess it worked”. The role of AI in the companies’ initial deactivation decisions is not disclosed in the documents we read. Our six-to-one tally counts uses described in this one report, not uses across the industry.
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Business Insider reports that deactivated Uber and Instacart workers are using ChatGPT to write evidence, estimate lost pay and draft arbitration letters, while Uber says it judges appeals on data and facts however they are submitted and Instacart says final decisions are always reviewed by a human. The report describes six worker-side uses of chatbots and one disclosed platform-side use, by our tally.
A note on sourcing. This piece is based on Business Insider’s November 8, 2026 report by Alex Bitter, which we read in full; the workers’ accounts, the Uber and Instacart statements and Robert Bruno’s remarks are as quoted there. We refer to the individual workers as they. The six-to-one count is our tally of the uses that report describes. The lead came from a Kalshi post on X. We did not contact Uber, Instacart or the workers.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
