Twitch – the popular gaming and IRL streaming platform – has announced it’ll start training generative AI models on those livestreaming on the platform.
This was immediately faced with pushback from the community of streamers and their communities. On the Twitch uservoice page, request to make these AI features optional is far-and-away the most popular request. One of the major demands following the announcement was why this feature was on by default, forcing users to manually go into the settings to opt out from generative AI training.
In an attempt to address the decision and interact with the community in-general, chief product officer Mike Minton and head of community Mary Kish sat down for a live Q&A last night. During this stream, Minton was asked why it was an opt-out feature, to which he offered a frank response.
they know we don’t want it. they do not care.
“Why is it not opt in, that’s what everyone here is spamming in chat, I get it. ”Let me opt in, rather than opt out’. There’s an honest answer, and I think most of you can appreciate this: if it was opt in, nobody would opt in.
“So it’s going to be on by default, and almost every content service in the world is on by default, and the thing we’re doing here that is unique is different is respecting your wishes to opt out of model training. I know this is not a fan favourite, I know it’s very upsetting to the community, but this is where we are.”
This did little to calm complaints, though the straightforward and frank nature of the statement was appreciated by some. It sounds as though this is a push from higher-ups at Amazon, a company that has been bullish on generative AI for many years now.
This approach to embracing generative AI has impacted other parts of the company too. Amazon Game Studios, prior to mass layoffs which gutted the developer, was working on a generative AI game which was ultimately cancelled when all the developers were let go.
Whether Twitch keeps this generative AI training implemented as is, or if it’ll concede to community demands to remove it (or make it opt-in) is the big question. Twitch isn’t the only big player in the livestreaming space anymore – so perhaps pressure from competitors will be what decides how it works with generative AI in the future.
