Livestreaming giants Twitch have admitted using streamed content to train the generative AI models of parent company Amazon. While it’s not clear when the platform began feeding its users’ work into Jeffy B’s Planetkilling Machines, yesterday’s announcement of an opt-out toggle – buried deep within Twitch’s security settings, and set to enable AI stream-gobbling by default – sparked outrage among streamers and viewers that such scraping was occurring at all.

Twitch’s chief product officer Mike Minton and head of community Mary Kish were wheeled out to explain the policy in a stream of their own, though it’s possible the only ones reassured by the discussion were the Amazon bots themselves. Although Minton was upfront about the models’ use of streamed video, he conceded that he didn’t know if users’ personal data had also been caught up in the scraping net, and that he wasn’t actually sure what Amazon "has done in terms of model training." Awesome. Awesome.

Obviously, being unaware of exactly what kind of plagiarism device they’re fuelling hasn’t stopped Twitch from continuing to shovel. Logging into my own account today prompted no notification that I’d been enlisted into Amazon’s training programme, and again, that manual opt-out was pretty damn far down the account settings menu. It also doesn’t exempt you from Twitch’s other "AI-supported" tools, though to throw a crumb of defence their way, the listed examples are all garden-variety machine learning doodads, not examples of the media-thieving genAI that emerged from somewhere dark and moist in the past couple of years.

To be clear, though, this is fucking stupid. Even if you don’t mind your own facecams and what-is-up-guys mic banter being used for AI training, the fact that game footage is getting scraped (for Amazon’s commercial benefit) risks a copyright nightmare, potentially shattering the peace between streamers and game publishers that streaming platforms like Twitch rely on. Currently, this relationship is based on copyright holders providing explicit or implicit permission for streamers to show, and even make cash off, the former’s games, usually with the understanding that it’s good for marketing. Twitch’s plan, or rather Amazon’s, seems based on the notion that those same rights holders will permit the scraping of their games for no equivalent, symbiotic benefit. As noted by commenters, certain games also feature unionised voice actors who will have agreements, in writing, that their performances won’t be fed into AI slop mills.

I’m saying all that, of course, as if Amazon would even give a toss. It’s doubtful they do, because they’re Amazon, and it’s even less likely that big game publishers (who are often genAI fans themselves) would want to give up the promotional benefits of streaming just to protect the interestsof minor stakeholders. Like, say, the artists who make their games.

All we can do, it seems, is make use of that opt-out. Which has at least prompted the one piece of Twitch messaging we can all agree with: "If it's opt-in, nobody would opt-in,” Minton said during yesterday’s livestream. "That's the honest answer."

And how. I've contacted Twitch for comment.