Twitch is using streamers' content to train parent company Amazon's generative AI models, with a new account setting that lets users opt out of the arrangement. The toggle appeared in account settings on August 12 and is switched on by default for every user, meaning anyone who does not want their material feeding Amazon's models has to act manually.
The setting covers more than just live broadcasts. Twitch says the opt-out preference applies to streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and any images and text posted to a user's channel.
The platform can still use AI-powered features like AutoMod and caption generation, though Twitch says content used for those features will not be retained to train AI models.
There is a catch for viewers who type in other people's channels. Twitch's help pages state that if you chat on someone else's stream, that channel's opt-out preferences govern whether that chat can be used for training.
So if you opt out and then post in a channel that has not, your messages still go in.
The opt-out applies to generative models only. Twitch states plainly that it does not opt anyone out of all AI or machine learning uses on the platform, with recommendations and real-time sponsorship campaign assistance also left untouched.
Chief product officer Mike Minton said in a broadcast that he did not know whether a user's videos had already been used in training, and noted that nearly every bit of audio on the platform is transcribed into text for stream summaries.
Minton was direct about why the setting is pre-enabled, saying that if it were opt-in, nobody would opt in. Twitch's own suggestion platform saw a comment demanding opt-in collected around 14,000 upvotes within hours.
