Twitch Defaults Creators Into Amazon AI Training

During a livestream on Twitch’s official channel, Chief Product Officer Mike Minton and Head of Community Mary Kish addressed an audience of nearly 3,000 aggrieved users, many of whom spammed anti-AI sentiments in the chat. Minton acknowledged the backlash over the default opt-in approach, saying, “If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in. That’s honestly the answer.”

The streaming platform has announced that creators’ content will now be used to help train generative AI models for its parent company, Amazon. The move means streamers are automatically included in the training data unless they manually opt out, a reversal of the more common opt-in consent model.

For Amazon, the stream recordings are highly valuable, offering thousands of hours of audio and video content to train AI models. But creators worry that many users may not realize their content is being used, especially since they often livestream themselves and their voices for multiple hours each week.

The policy has prompted swift and concentrated backlash from the Twitch community, with many concerned about unknowingly surrendering personal content for AI development. Minton’s candid explanation that an opt-in system would likely see little participation has done little to ease those concerns.