Twitch Streamers Can Now Refuse To Let Amazon Train Its genAI Models On Their Content

There’s now an opt-out toggle for something that should have been opt-in to begin with.

Twitch has updated its account settings to let streamers opt out of letting Amazon (Twitch's parent) train generative AI models on their content. Some may not have realized this setting was automatically enabled on their account — which is deeply gross — but at least they can now tell Amazon to shove it if they are anti-genAI or just don't want to let the company exploit their labor.

A support page notes that, if a streamer opts out, their streams (and on-demand versions of those), clips, stream chats and any other text and images on their channel won't be fed into Amazon's models in the future. The purpose of these models, Twitch says, "is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images or video."

Streamers' content may still be used for other AI- or machine learning-powered purposes, including automated captions. Twitch notes that its AutoMod tool doesn't retain users' data or tap into that to generate any material. It added that some of the AI functions help protect the whole community and "turning those off for one person would weaken safety and security for everyone else on the platform, so they are not individual settings."

If you're a streamer and want to opt out of Amazon vacuuming up your content and shoving it into the gaping maws of its genAI models, you just have to visit your Twitch settings. You'll see a "Training for Generative AI" toggle you can disable. This will also explain that Twitch and Amazon can still use your channel's content for other AI-powered features. If you take part in another streamer's chat, their settings will dictate whether what you post there is used for genAI training.

Reporting from Engadget contributed to this story.