Twitch users outraged as Amazon uses their content to train AI in opt-out feature

Twitch has been criticised by users after it emerged the popular streaming platform allowed their content to be used to train Amazon's AI models.

Amazon owns Twitch and a setting allowing the US tech giant to take data generated by creators and audiences to train AI is turned on by default.

Users can opt out of that, Twitch said on Wednesday, external, but the announcement sparked a backlash with some users questioning why it was allowed in the first place.

Twitch's chief product officer Mike Minton, said it was "respecting" users by letting them opt out but on why data was collected by default, he admitted: "If it's opt-in, nobody would opt-in. That's the honest answer."

Users who remain opted in could have any of their channel content used for training, Minton said during a livestream, adding that the data collected will not be re-sold to other companies.

In Twitch's own FAQs about its use of AI, external, it says if users do not opt out, their content could be used to train generative AI models.

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence which creates new content, such as text, images and video. Chabots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini are both examples of the tech.

For example, Twitch said a person's audio might be used to "refine models that create speech to text". It said this would help improve automatic subtitles on Twitch streams as well as Amazon videos.

Some also questioned, external what the implications could be for game developers, given the feature would also seemingly train Amazon's AI models on the countless video games being played by streamers.

"On by default is criminal.... the AI narrative push is so draining," said one streamer, external underneath Twitch Support's post about the feature.

On the same livestream, Mary Kish, head of community at Twitch, took viewers through a tutorial on how to disable generative AI training through a user's channel settings.

Those that do want to disable it would need to navigate to the Settings tab in their Streamer Dashboard, click the Security and Privacy tab, then scroll down to near the bottom of the options and toggle off "training for Generative AI".