Twitch Streamer Outrage and Amazon AI: The Quick and the Dirty

_Twitch streamers seeing a threat in Amazon’s AI model/Simon Says

Instead of having the option set to OFF and allowing streamers to opt in if they see fit, the platform automatically uses its clients’ media to train Amazon’s AI, and only as a side note, allows them to opt out

But this has caught up with them making the news for the first time nearly a week ago, and it is still a raging fire.

Twitch attempted to douse the flames with an X update on August 12 that read:

We’ve added a setting that lets you opt out of having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon.

If anything, it fueled anger and the likes of US Twitch veteran JayViper saw nothing but irony and commented:

ON by DEFAULT. I find it funny how right underneath it says, “Twitch respects your privacy.”

Another netizen summed up the general sentiment when they wrote:

How about you see what your community wants instead ignoring the huge backed petition everyone signed to NOT have this — but ya won’t cause you corrupt like every ceo

_”what [the twitch] community wants…”

Speaking of the CEO or at least in this case the CPO, Mike Minton… He has since weighed in and said simply:

If it was opt-in, nobody would opt in. That’s the honest answer…

Well six days later and it is still an inflammatory topic with streamers taking to social media to vent their disgust.

Not Happy: Streamers and fans on X

Twitch seems to be sticking by their guns with their stance being — as Minton said in his live stream:

It’s going to be on by default, and in almost every content service in the world, it is on by default.

Well screw the ethics Mike, let’s just do what “almost every content service in the world” is doing…