Twitch announced it will allow parent company Amazon to use creators’ content to train generative AI models, sparking significant backlash from the platform’s community after it emerged that creators are automatically opted in by default. The change gives Amazon access to vast amounts of audio and video from Twitch livestreams, though users must manually opt out if they don’t want their content used for AI training.
During a livestream addressing nearly 3,000 concerned viewers, Twitch Head of Community Mary Kish and Chief Product Officer Mike Minton acknowledged the controversy directly. Minton said the decision to make the setting opt-out rather than opt-in was intentional, explaining that few users would choose to participate if given an upfront choice. When asked whether previously recorded content had already been used for training, Minton said he could not confirm what Amazon may have already done with the data.
Kish noted that Twitch’s approach mirrors broader industry practice, pointing to Meta, which similarly uses public content from Facebook and Instagram to train its AI models, with opt-out options available primarily to users in regions like the U.K. Kish characterized the addition of an opt-out setting as a direct response to community concerns about generative AI training.
Users seeking to opt out can do so through their Twitch channel security and privacy settings, where a toggle for AI training can be disabled.
