Twitch Adds Opt-Out for Amazon AI Training on Livestreams

Amazon confirms AI training on Twitch content

Twitch announced Wednesday that users can now opt out of having their livestream content used to train Amazon's AI models—a feature that simultaneously confirmed the practice has been occurring. The streaming platform, owned by Amazon since 2014, introduced the privacy setting amid what executives openly acknowledged would be an unfavorable reception from its community.

During a livestream explaining the changes, Mary Kish, Twitch's head of community, set expectations plainly: "We don't expect you to be happy or excited about this. I don't expect anyone to react to this favorably."

The prediction proved accurate. The announcement's live chat filled with hundreds of anti-AI messages, while prominent streamers used social media to criticize both the training practice and the opt-out approach, which makes AI training the default setting for all users.

Executives unable to clarify training history

Twitch chief product officer Mike Minton said he could not confirm whether Amazon had already used Twitch content for model training. "I don't know what Amazon in this case has done in terms of model training, and what they've used and not used," Minton stated. "I'm not responsible for Amazon's training efforts."

Both Minton and Kish positioned the opt-out feature as a privacy protection that distinguishes Twitch from other platforms. Minton noted that "almost any publicly available content is being used for model training in one form or another, whether permitted or not."

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment on the announcement.

How to disable AI training

Users who want to prevent their content from being used in Amazon's AI development can adjust their settings by navigating to privacy controls on Twitch and toggling the slider at the bottom of the page. Minton clarified that while Twitch itself uses AI for captions, clips, and content classification, the platform does not currently deploy generative AI features.

Why it matters

The announcement arrives as Amazon accelerates its AI infrastructure investments and repositions to compete with frontier model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic. The company has been winding down some internal AI projects while ramping up efforts to enter the competitive large language model space. Twitch's vast repository of video content—featuring real-time human interaction, gaming, creative work, and conversation—represents a potentially valuable training dataset for multimodal AI systems. The backlash highlights growing creator concerns about how their work feeds AI development without explicit consent or compensation, a tension likely to intensify across content platforms as AI companies seek training data at scale.

These details were first reported by Business Insider.