Twitch Uses Streamers’ Content to Train AI

The popular streaming platform Twitch announced that its creators’ videos will be automatically used by its parent company, Amazon, to train AI models. The decision was met with strong opposition from the platform’s community because streamers were enrolled in the process by default rather than voluntarily, and they must manually change a specific setting to opt out. TechCrunch.com reports .

According to ixbt.com, Twitch streamers with thousands of hours of audio and video recordings are concerned that their voices and appearances could be used without their consent to create AI models. Platform users protested the news and strongly criticized why the system does not automatically operate on an opt-in basis.

Streamers’ Objections and Management’s Response

During a livestream on Twitch’s official channel, Mary Kish, head of community engagement, and Mike Minton, chief product officer, were forced to answer questions from more than three thousand angry users. In response to the question in chat, “Why didn’t they make this optional?”, Mike Minton openly replied: “If it were optional, nobody would agree. To be honest, that’s the point.”

Company representatives initially presented the change as a setting that would allow users to refuse to let Amazon train its AI models. However, this approach caused even more confusion among streamers. When one user asked whether their videos had already been used to train AI, Minton admitted that he did not know exactly what Amazon had done or which data it had used.

The Broader Trend and How to Change the Setting

At the same time, Mary Kish emphasized that Twitch is not alone in this regard, noting that other major technology companies, such as Meta, also use public content on their platforms to train AI. According to her, if a user’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are public, their data may also be used to create AI models.

Twitch management insists that the setting itself demonstrates its response to the community’s concerns and that users have been given a choice. If streamers do not want their content to be used to train Amazon’s AI, they must follow these steps:

• Go to the channel settings, not the Creator Dashboard.
• Select the Security and Privacy section.
• Find the “AI Training” option and turn it off.