Twitch Streamers File AI Training Lawsuit Against Amazon
Content creators are demanding compensation for their broadcasts used for commercial purposes without their consent or financial compensation, while wanting Amazon to stop this practice.
Warren Pandiscia, a Twitch streamer living in Connecticut, has filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Amazon used content on the platform to train artificial intelligence models without explicit permission.
Alleged Breach of User Agreement
In the lawsuit filed by streamer Warren Pandiscia, who lives in the state of Connecticut, it was alleged that Twitch, owned by Amazon, violated its user agreement. The complaint stated that content produced by streamers was used in AI training without permission.
The plaintiffs argue that content creators' works were utilized for commercial purposes without their consent and without any financial compensation, demanding damages and an injunction to stop the practice.
Twitch's AI Policy and Reactions
In August, Twitch announced that user content could be used in Amazon's AI efforts and offered streamers an option to opt out of this system. However, this decision drew significant backlash from content creators on the platform.
In the company's frequently asked questions section, it is stated that users' voice recordings may be used to develop speech-to-text models. It is expressed that this practice aims to improve automatic captioning systems in Twitch and Amazon videos.
No official statement has yet been made by Amazon or Twitch regarding these developments on the platform, where streamers produced more than 215 million hours of content in the first months of the year.