Twitch AI opt-out draws backlash at TwitchCon in San Diego

Twitch introduced an option letting streamers opt out of having their content used to train AI models owned by parent company Amazon a few months before TwitchCon in San Diego, NBC News reported. At the convention, attendees criticized OpenAI’s prominent expo-floor presence and its Codex hackathon despite AI being absent from official programming. Some attendees described OpenAI’s activation as tone-deaf, bland and boring, and stupid. A Twitch user wrote on X over the weekend that no one wanted the AI partnership.

The post linked to a forum urging Twitch to end partnerships with AI companies. Streamers remain split over AI, NBC News reported. Some want to try new tools, while others fear harm to human creativity and jobs. At the convention, some streamers said speech-to-text, auto-captioning and clipping could help if they do not generate content or replace human creativity, NBC News reported.

Chloe Van Ryn, 31, of Arizona, said AI could aid accessibility and moderation but questioned its role in creative work on Twitch.

Van Ryn said she would not allow her content to train AI models and described Twitch’s opt-out plan as suspicious. She said people must know they are opting in and that communities should know whether a creator has opted in or out, NBC News reported.

Rummeko, identified only by his Twitch username, said he is not a fan of AI. He said making AI content scraping universal and requiring multi-layer opt-out is wrong and disrespectful, NBC News reported.

Critics told NBC News they never gave consent for anyone to scrape their content and said the feature should have been opt-in instead of opt-out.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy told NBC News that automatic opt-in does not mean a user’s data has already been scraped. He said the opt-out toggle is a preventive measure in case Amazon plans to train AI on Twitch content. Clancy said Twitch wants creators to be able to express their wishes about where their data goes.

It is unclear whether Amazon has already used Twitch content to train its models, NBC News reported. Amazon did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Twitch Chief Product Officer Mike Minton declined to comment at TwitchCon because of lawsuits filed by streamers over the controversy.

Clancy and Minton said most other services do not let users opt out of AI training on their content. They said offering the opt-out put a spotlight on Twitch even though the issue is not unique to the company. Minton said the opt-out drove conversation and a moment around creators’ concerns and fears about generative AI, though nuance gets lost, NBC News reported.