Twitch confirms Amazon trains AI models on livestreams

Amazon, through its subsidiary Twitch, has officially confirmed that its artificial intelligence models are being trained on livestream content, a move that has triggered immediate and widespread backlash from the platform’s user base. The confirmation followed a Wednesday announcement detailing a new privacy setting that allows creators to opt out of data usage, though the feature defaults to an automatic opt-in status. During a broadcast addressing the policy update, Twitch head of community Mary Kish openly acknowledged the likely negative reception, stating the company did not anticipate user enthusiasm for the initiative. The prediction proved accurate as stream chats filled with criticism, and several prominent creators publicly condemned the practice on social media, urging their audiences to disable the setting. Twitch chief product officer Mike Minton clarified the company’s position, noting that while the platform utilizes AI for functional tasks such as generating captions, clips, and content classifications, it does not currently deploy generative AI features. When pressed on whether Amazon had already ingested livestream data for training purposes, Minton declined to comment, distinguishing Twitch operational scope from Amazon broader artificial intelligence infrastructure. The executives framed the opt-out mechanism as a necessary privacy safeguard, arguing that publicly accessible content is widely utilized for model development regardless of explicit consent. The strategic shift aligns with Amazon aggressive expansion into large-scale artificial intelligence development. Since acquiring Twitch in 2014, the tech giant has been rapidly scaling its computing infrastructure and consolidating internal development efforts to compete in the frontier model race alongside industry leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Amazon declined to provide additional commentary on the matter when contacted for further clarification. Creators seeking to remove their content from training datasets can adjust the relevant privacy slider within their Twitch account settings.