Twitch quietly announced that it is or intends to use videos livestreamed on its platform to train Amazon's generative AI models on Wednesday. There have been rumors about this in recent weeks, but the official confirmation comes by way of the Twitch Support X account informing streamers they can opt out of AI training. Twitch posted that the company will talk more about the announcement on its live show, streaming on Twitch on Wednesday afternoon.
A crucial detail here is that generative AI training is turned on automatically for all Twitch accounts. One must opt out to stop Amazon from using their data to train what Twitch calls in its FAQ "future training of a model developed by Amazon whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images, or video."
You can opt out in Twitch's security settings. The switch is under a heading labeled "Training for Generative AI."
Twitch said in its FAQ that if you're not opting out, livestreams, chat, VODs, clips, highlights, "and any text or images on your Channel" are fair game. Typing in another Twitch streamer's chat is also being used, and their AI settings determine whether your words could be used for AI training. In clearer terms: If you have opted out of AI training, but your favorite Twitch streamer hasn't, anything you say in their chat can be used by Amazon.
"When you allow training, that means that your content may be used for future Gen AI model improvements," Twitch wrote in its FAQ. "An example of what happens when you allow your content to be used for training a GenAI content model is that your audio might help refine models that create speech to text, which would help improve captions at Twitch but would also help improve captions across Amazon."
Twitch also said in the FAQ that opting out doesn't mean Twitch won't use anything AI related: "Opting-out of training generative AI content models does not opt you out of all AI or machine learning uses at Twitch. For example, Twitch will still run AutoMod, which helps keep our community safe, but does not retain your data and use it to produce content. Twitch may also still use your data to run AI-supported features, like captions, which automatically generate captions for your Clips but does not retain your stream or your clips to train a model that can generate new content."
Unsurprisingly, this feature is not going over well—not just that Amazon and Twitch are using streams to train AI, but that streamers are automatically opted in. Streamers have started passing around links to Twitch's User Voice forums, where people can suggest features. In May, one person shared an idea: "Make all AI features optional, and opt-out by default." That suggestion has gotten 13,000 votes and is growing rapidly since the announcement Wednesday. Streamers are flooding the comments after Wednesday's announcement in support of the suggestions; they don't want their content to be used to train Amazon's generative AI models.
I'm sure the Twitch stream later today will go over fine! AAftermath reached out to Amazon and Twitch for comment.
