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I am 2 months into a 6-month co-op (extended internship for those unfamiliar) centered around machine learning. Thus far I have been assigned to work on a couple of projects, all of which have been very educational and informative - and I enjoy every project save for one.

The one project I do not enjoy working on is with the company's full stack team developing an API for a database other teams rely on for storage. The full stack team did have another intern working on the API, but when he left they asked for my help in helping finish the work he left undone. That was about a month ago, since then I have been refactoring and documenting the his code, learning a slew of libraries the API depends on, trying to get up to speed with the project as a whole, etc.

The work on the project has been informative, I've learned a good deal about containization and web development libraries among other things, but am continually bothered because I am working on tasks that do not line up with what my co-op is suppose to be centered on.

I would greatly prefer to be working on machine learning centered projects, but do not want to raise a fuss since I am only an intern, and I know my involvement with the project likely won't last for the duration of the whole project (1-2 more months I am guessing). Should I just gut this out, or would it be appropriate to bring my feelings up with my direct supervisor or the full-stack team lead (who originally wrangled me into this)?

Being rigid in what you want to learn vs not learn and what you want to work upon vs not work upon will not help you as an Intern to gather practical learning and work experience.

Life doesn't always go the way we want it to. Even during regular job, you will many times end up getting (grunt) work/projects/assignments that you will not enjoy.

Since you know your involvement in this one is for 1-2 months - I would suggest to take this as an opportunity to learn how to keep yourself motivated while doing grunt work, and how to do it faster so that you can move back quickly to what you really enjoy doing.

I wouldn't bring it up.

To me, as a co-op or intern, that fact that you say that you are learning is a good thing. The purpose of such work experiences is to learn and, well, get experience. It seems like you're being asked to do things within the realm of your education and competence and are getting the appropriate support from your company and colleagues to complete the work asked of you.

When you're at work, whether it's a co-op or internship or full-time, you're typically expected to do the work that you're qualified to do. There are reasons to bring up concerns with your lead or manager, such as if you're being asked to do work that you don't feel qualified to do or you aren't getting the support that you need. But working on a project that doesn't interest you isn't one of them. Sometimes, you need to work on projects that aren't interesting, but they need to be done to meet company objectives.

If you're asked, you can express a stronger interest in machine learning. But I would be careful with the wording and it would depend greatly on your relationship with your colleagues.