Twitch is going to train Amazon’s AI models on streamers’ content unless they deliberately go into their settings and opt out, potentially sweeping up a wealth of streamers who either don’t hear about the announcement or follow steps stop it.
On Wednesday Twitch announced a new setting that lets streamers opt-out of the training. The announcement confirms rumors that have percolated over the last week: It is using streamers to train Amazon’s AI models.
The new toggle says, "Allow your channel content to train generative AI content models at Amazon." All users are opted in by default. It's located at the bottom of users' security settings page.
"If you opt-out and decide to not allow your channel content to train Generative AI content models, your streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text on your channel will not be used in future training of a model developed by Amazon whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images, or video," Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, says in its new FAQ section about generative AI.
"Opting-out of training generative AI content models does not opt you out of all AI or machine learning uses at Twitch," Twitch's support page says. "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."
Twitch is positioning this setting as a favor to users. "We've added a setting that lets you opt out of having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon," the platform posted on X Wednesday. In practice, Twitch makes this choice for users unless they know about the new setting and proactively turn it off. This was the case on my own Twitch account, and users on social media are reporting the same.
Twitch executives have been talking about using streamers' content to train AI for years. In 2024, Twitch Chief Monetization Officer Mike Minton said Twitch has a “role to play” in training Amazon's generative AI models, adding that Twitch content was already being used “in a prototyping, not in any kind of production scale, capacity.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitch's publicly available press email repeatedly bounced.