Amazon Will Train On Twitch Streamers' Content By Default, Unless They Opt Out
- Reference: 0184960001
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/08/13/1853232/amazon-will-train-on-twitch-streamers-content-by-default-unless-they-opt-out
- Source link:
"Why is it not opt-in? That's what everybody is spamming in chat. I get it. 'Let me opt in versus making me opt out,'" said Twitch Chief Product Officer Mike Minton. "Well, there's an honest answer... If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in. That's honestly the answer." TechCrunch reports:
> For Amazon, these stream recordings are incredibly valuable, offering thousands of hours of audio and video content to help train AI models. But Twitch users worry that since creators have to manually opt out, they might be surrendering their content to train Amazon's AI content models without even knowing it. This is especially concerning on a platform like Twitch, where creators are often recording livestreams of themselves and their voices for many hours per week.
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> [...] Twitch knows that its community of streamers is largely opposed to the use of generative AI, since the most prevalent generative AI products are trained on books, images, videos, and other materials scraped from the internet without consent. Even Twitch's approach to breaking this news shows that the company is braced for backlash. Instead of telling the community that Amazon would begin training on Twitch users' content, Twitch [3]framed this change as "[adding] a setting that lets you opt out of having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon."
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> In some cases, this created confusion among streamers about whether their content had already been fed to Amazon without their knowledge. When one user asked if their videos had already been used for training, Minton responded, "I don't actually know the answer to that question because I don't know what Amazon [...] has done in terms of model training and what they've used and not used."
[1] https://x.com/TwitchSupport/status/2087572924450455558
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/12/amazon-will-train-on-twitch-streamers-content-by-default-unless-they-opt-out/
[3] https://x.com/TwitchSupport/status/2087572924450455558
"That's honestly the answer." (Score:2)
"Well, there's an honest answer... If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in. That's honestly the answer." - Because no one wants to train your bullshit AI. Hey, here's an idea, PAY the creators for their work to be included in your AI nonsense. Stop raping people already.
Re: (Score:2)
Just wait until it starts training on porn that people managed to upload to Twitch in violation of the terms and conditions. Then your use of the word "rape" in that comment will take on a whole new meaning.
Garbage In, Garbage Out (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't fathom anything on twitch helping train AI except as an example of how not to speak or behave.
Re:Garbage In, Garbage Out (Score:4, Funny)
They need content for the hallucinations.
In a sane world... (Score:1)
In a sane world companies would by default cut actual money checks to people they scrapped their data from..... anything less is grounds for ending their existence.
Incentivize opting in (Score:1)
Ideally, pay cold hard cash to opt in.
Second choice would be to provide some real add-on value to opt in.
What's really going to happen if opt-out becomes too toxic for twitch: They will go opt-in but enshittify the product for those who don't opt-in, touting a "better" (meaning maybe as good as August 2026) experience for those who opt in.
Sort of like the "opt in" toll roads in places where the free roads went from being decent to dangerous due to "lack of funding" to pay for maintenance.
Ditch Twitch (Score:1)
I guess I'll have to find a different venue to stream from/to then. Goodbye, Twitch. That simple sentence has a rather resounding sense of finality to it for me.
Last I Saw Twitch (Score:2)
The last time I saw anything on Twitch it was a stream of somebody playing a game and a chat room full of utterly incomprehensible nonsense, gibberish, and emojis scrolling by at an unreadable speed.
Are they training the AI to be schizophrenic?
It blows my mind that anyone watches that shit. Yet, they seem to have an insane amount of users.
Re: (Score:2)
At this point, they are getting desperate for anything non-AI generated to train AI on.
AI is a guaranteed Monopoly (Score:2)
Not quite but I don't know the actual term for a market that is completely controlled by two or three players.
Basically the major platform holders are going to be the only ones who can differentiate between human beings and AI slop and without the ability to do that any up and coming AI product is going to be trained on freely available data on the internet which is so completely full of slop that the end result is going to be garbage.
AI was a one-time Gold Rush for a couple of companies and everyone
If this data is as valuable as they claim (Score:3)
Then they should offer to license and pay the creators for it.
Re: If this data is as valuable as they claim (Score:2)
Fair. But then should the creators be charged for the bandwidth, storage, and encoding their streams use? It cuts both way.
Not that Twitch has much choice here. I guarantee this is being pushed on them from Amazon. I think that is why the Twitch execs are being so blunt with how they are communicating it.
Re: (Score:2)
If the original ToS on Twitch grants Amazon a license to create derivative works then they don't have anything to worry about.
It's like your local superstation had the rights to run ads on Star Trek in addition to the license fee they paid but they didn't therefore get a right to create a new Star Trek series or publish a "Best Moments of STTNG 1989" show around the holidays.
Now if they had gone to Paramount about the Best-Of show in theory they could have negotiated a license for that, having already been
Re: (Score:2)
> (i) Unless otherwise agreed to in a written agreement between you and Twitch that was signed by an authorized representative of Twitch, if you submit, transmit, display, perform, post, or store User Content using the Twitch Services, you grant Twitch and its sub-licensees , to the furthest extent and for the maximum duration permitted by applicable law (including in perpetuity if permitted under applicable law), an unrestricted, worldwide, irrevocable, fully sub-licenseable, nonexclusive, and royalty-free ri
Re: (Score:2)
The creator is the product. That never gets old :D