Amazon is accused of harvesting Twitch users’ data without their consent

A Twitch streamer filed a class-action lawsuit against Twitch and Amazon, accusing them of not asking platform users for permission to use the content from their channels to train various artificial intelligence models from the e-commerce giant. According to him, the streamers would have suffered financial and material losses.For his part, Twitch product director Mike Minton explained why the button allowing users to opt out of data collection is enabled by default.

Amazon will use Twitch users’ data to train an AI

As we mentioned recently, Amazon announced that it would use Twitch users’ data for the «future training of a model» developed by the e-commerce giant. More specifically, this concerns Twitch channel content, such as live streams, rebroadcasts, clips, text, images, video, and audio. The streaming platform particularly explains that «your audio content could help refine speech transcription models, which would improve captions on Twitch, but also on Amazon».

Remember that Twitch users can opt out by going to the platform’s settings and unchecking the “Generative AI Training” box. However, this option does not appear to have satisfied a Twitch streamer, who decided to file a class-action lawsuit against Twitch and Amazon.

A streamer files a class-action lawsuit against Twitch and Amazon

To fully understand this case, it should be noted that the “Generative AI Training” button is enabled by default.This is precisely why Warren Pandiscia, an American streamer living in Connecticut, filed a class-action lawsuit against Twitch and Amazon. According to him, Amazon has never obtained the consent of Twitch streamers to collect their data and thereby train a new AI model. The complaint states that Twitch and Amazon breached their contracts by using their streamers as “free training partners for separate commercial AI products ”.

The complaint also accuses the two companies of profiting financially from their streamers, who allegedly suffered financial or material harm as a result of the practices deemed illegal, unfair and fraudulent of Twitch and Amazon. During a livestream focused on Twitch’s latest features, a streamer asked Mike Minton, the company’s head of products, why the “Generative AI Training” button was enabled by default. Mike Minton replied: “If it were an option to enable, nobody would enable it”. It is difficult to disagree with him on this point. It now remains to be seen whether this class-action lawsuit and, more generally, Twitch streamers’ dissatisfaction will push Amazon to reconsider its strategy.

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Source: Courthouse News