Warren Pandiscia, a Twitch streamer from Connecticut, has filed a lawsuit against Twitch owner Amazon for using streams to train AI.
Specifically, the lawsuit states that Amazon’s AI had been ingesting Twitch streams before it gave creators a way to opt out of the process. Twitch’s chief product officer, Mike Minton, was asked when the harvesting began and said “I don’t actually know the answer to that question because I don’t know what Amazon has done in terms of model training and what they’ve used and not used.”
It also frames Amazon’s announcement of the ‘feature’ as a casual option rather than something that everyone should be aware of, stating that Amazon informed users they were “[adding] a setting that lets you opt out of having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon.”
“Rather than seek permission or pay a fair price for the audiovisual content streamed on Twitch, Defendants harvested content creators’ streams at scale without consent or compensation,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants’ actions were not only unlawful, but an unconscionable attack on the community of content creators whose content is used to fuel the multitrillion-dollar generative AI industry without any compensation.”
While the Twitch FAQ states streams may be used “refine models that create speech to text”, other supporting documents state that the content eligible for Amazon’s generative AI training includes “streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text on your channel,” which may be used in “future training of a model developed by Amazon whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images, or video.”
This means that streamers’ appearance, mannerisms, and voice can all be used by Amazon for their AI. Start streaming, and unless you have turned off the option, everything you broadcast could be used.
Source: Courthouse News
