Streaming giant Twitch has announced a new policy: it will now utilize content from its creators to facilitate the training of generative AI models for its parent company, Amazon. This decision has ignited prompt and substantial opposition from the Twitch community, primarily due to the default setting that automatically opts creators into having their content employed for this AI training.
For Amazon, these extensive stream recordings represent an invaluable resource, providing thousands of hours of audio and video material crucial for enhancing AI model training. However, Twitch users are concerned that the requirement for manual opt-out means they could inadvertently contribute their content to Amazon’s AI development without full awareness. This apprehension is particularly pronounced on a platform like Twitch, where creators routinely broadcast live streams featuring themselves and their voices for numerous hours each week.
During a live stream on the official Twitch channel, Mary Kish, Twitch's Head of Community, and Mike Minton, Chief Product Officer, addressed an audience of nearly 3,000 concerned users, many of whom were actively posting anti-AI sentiments in the chat.
“Why is it not opt-in? That’s what everybody is spamming in chat. I get it. ‘Let me opt in versus making me opt out,’” Minton acknowledged. He then provided a candid explanation: “Well, there’s an honest answer… If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in. That’s honestly the answer.”
Twitch is well aware that its community of streamers largely disapproves of generative AI applications, a sentiment rooted in the common practice of training most prevalent generative AI products on books, images, videos, and other digital assets often scraped from the internet without explicit consent.
The manner in which Twitch communicated this change further indicates the company’s anticipation of a negative reaction. Rather than directly informing the community that Amazon would commence training on Twitch users’ content, Twitch framed the update as the “adding a setting that lets you opt out of having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon.”
In some instances, this communication strategy led to confusion among streamers regarding whether their content had already been provided to Amazon without their knowledge. When a user inquired if their videos had already been utilized for training, Minton responded, “I don’t actually know the answer to that question because I don’t know what Amazon […] has done in terms of model training and what they’ve used and not used.”
Kish pointed out that Twitch's approach to using user content for AI training is not unique within the industry. She cited Meta, for example, which leverages public content from its platforms to train its own AI models. This implies that if your Facebook and Instagram accounts are public, your data has likely already been incorporated into Meta’s AI training. (Users residing in the U.K. have the option to opt out of Meta’s training; otherwise, the only effective way to “opt out” involves activating private settings, a measure often unfeasible for creators who rely on public engagement for monetization).
Kish affirmed that the very inclusion of an opt-out option on Twitch is “a reflection of reacting to this community’s voice that you are not wanting to train Gen AI models, and we want to give you that option.”
To opt out of AI training on Twitch, users can access their channel settings (distinct from the creator dashboard), navigate to the security and privacy tab, scroll down to the option labeled “training for generative AI,” and toggle it off.
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