Twitch Lets Amazon Train AI on Creator Content by Default, With Opt-Out Available
Following public pushback, Twitch has added a setting that lets creators stop Amazon from using their channels’ content to train generative AI models. This, of course, means Twitch is letting Amazon—its parent company—train its models on their content by default.
The setting, called “Training for Generative AI,” is automatically enabled on all creator accounts and allows Amazon to use a channel’s livestreams, video-on-demand uploads, clips, chat messages, images, and text. This data can help train models that generate or synthesize the usual media formats: text, audio, images, and video.
Those who don’t want Amazon to use their work and communities for future AI training must toggle off the setting that reads “Allow your channel content to train generative AI content models at Amazon” at the bottom of the settings page, 404 Media reports. Unsurprisingly, users weren’t thrilled about this opt-out policy, which Twitch’s chief product officer, Mike Minton, explicitly chose not to use because he figured an opt-in system would result in low participation.
Toggling off AI training access does not fully prevent Twitch and Amazon from using AI on users’ content, however. Twitch can use content for things like recommendations, moderation, safety tools, and other platform features, as stated in its privacy notice. Also, a user who disables the setting on their own channel may still see their chat messages used for training if they write in another channel that has kept the setting enabled; the owner of the other channel controls the relevant setting.
It hasn’t yet been established which Amazon models use Twitch data, how much user data Amazon has leveraged, or whether Amazon has already trained models on every creator’s past content without their knowledge. And no, it doesn’t appear that those whose work is used for AI training will receive any compensation for their assistance. Go figure.
