A Twitch streamer has filed a proposed class action against the platform and its parent company Amazon, claiming his broadcasts, and those of countless other creators, were fed into generative AI training with neither consent nor payment.
According to Courthouse News, plaintiff Warren Pandiscia – a Twitch creator with around 1000 followers – filed his 37-page complaint in the Northern District of California last week. It alleges Twitch and Amazon copied vast quantities of streamer footage without securing proper licences, a breach of creators’ implied agreements with the platform and a violation of state unfair competition law.
Twitch announced it would start training generative AI models on the platform earlier this month. Its community of streamers immediately pushed back, with demands that these AI features be optional the most popular request by miles. Streamers demanded to know why this feature was on by default, forcing users to manually go into the settings to opt out from generative AI training.
Chief product officer Mike Minton offered a surprisingly candid response to this question, insisting that “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”.
“The thing we’re doing here that is unique is different is respecting your wishes to opt out of model training,” Minton added. “I know this is not a fan favourite, I know it’s very upsetting to the community, but this is where we are.”
The new lawsuit follows Twitch’s own admission, made via a post on X on 12th August, that it uses creator content, including streams, past clips, chat logs, and photos, to train Amazon’s AI models and, crucially, the opt-out isn’t retroactive.
The setting isn’t universal, though. It’s tied to individual channels rather than accounts, so a streamer who opts out can still have their content used if they show up on someone else’s stream that hasn’t.
Pandiscia claims he had no reason to suspect his content was being used this way, opted out as soon as the setting existed, and argues the companies had been quietly using streamer content for AI training as far back as 2024, before any disclosure or opt-out mechanism was in place.
Neither Twitch nor Amazon has yet responded to Courthouse News’ request for comment. Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014 for roughly $970 million.
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.
