AI is still weighing on streamers at Twitch’s biggest event of the year

Those were some of the reactions from TwitchCon attendees who encountered a surprisingly prominent presence on the expo floor at the streaming platform’s annual convention: OpenAI.

The company behind ChatGPT had set up shop to promote its Codex coding tool through a hackathon at the event, which brings together Twitch personalities, their fans and industry experts to discuss the future of streaming.

But the booth drew criticism from some attendees who remain uneasy about AI’s growing influence over their creative work.

“No one wanted this, and we made that clear,” one Twitch user wrote on X over the weekend, sharing a link to a forum for the community to call on Twitch to end its partnership with AI companies.

The negative response from some toward OpenAI’s activation came despite AI being largely absent from TwitchCon’s official programming. The technology remains a divisive issue among streamers, with some eager to experiment with new tools and others concerned about the implications for human creativity and jobs.

Just a few months ago, Twitch stoked outrage from its user base when it publicly introduced an option that would allow streamers to opt out of having their content used to train AI models owned by its parent company, Amazon. Streamers who criticized the move said they never consented to their content being scraped in the first place, and that the feature should’ve been opt-in instead of opt-out.

But at the San Diego convention this weekend, some streamers said they feel AI tools — such as speech-to-text, auto-captioning and clipping — could be helpful as long as they’re not used to generate content and replace human creativity.

“I do think it’s useful in a sense of accessibility for people who may not be able to do certain things,” said TwitchCon attendee Chloe Van Ryn, 31, from Arizona. “I think it could be good for moderator tools or pinpointing new users or things like that, if AI could track that. But I think if it was anything within a creative sense, I really don’t know if it’s a good place for Twitch.”

Van Ryn said she’s suspicious about Twitch’s approach to its streamers’ content after it introduced its controversial opt-out toggle. She said she wouldn’t be comfortable with her own content being fed into AI models.

“It’s like the same as [when AI companies are] taking books and scanning them and then just completely destroying them,” Van Ryn said. “I think it’s definitely something like you have to know you’re opting into it. And I think it’s really important that your people, your community, know whether you’re opting in or not.”

Others expressed more staunchly anti-AI views.

“I’m not a fan of AI. If you are so desperate and trying to cling to it, there are creators who use AI. Go to those people,” said Rummeko, who asked to be identified by his Twitch username. “But I think to make [AI content scraping] widespread for all, and we all have to go in several layers deep to turn it off, I think that’s an entirely wrong and disrespectful way to go about it.”

When asked about streamers’ concerns surrounding their content being potentially fed to Amazon’s AI models, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy told NBC News that being automatically opted in doesn’t mean a user’s data has already been scraped.

He said the toggle is intended to be a preventive measure in case Amazon does have plans to train its AI on Twitch content.

“We in fact said, ‘Well, look, if Amazon wants to use this data — that doesn’t mean they are, I am not involved in [what Amazon is doing] — we want our creators to have the ability to opt out,’” Clancy said. “And that way, wherever this is going, our creators are able to express their wishes.”

It’s unclear whether Amazon has already used content from Twitch to train its models. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an interview at TwitchCon, Twitch’s Chief Product Officer Mike Minton declined to comment the matter, citing lawsuits from streamers filed in response to the controversy.

“In terms of what’s happened in the past, due to ongoing litigation, I have nothing to say,” Minton said.

Clancy and Minton said that most other services don’t give users the option to opt out of their content being used for AI training — and that by making that option available, Twitch put a spotlight on itself despite the issue not being unique to the company.

“There’s a trade-off there, and we felt it was important to offer the option,” Minton said. “That obviously drove a conversation, drove a moment around creators’ concerns and fears around generative AI. And unfortunately, in those moments, a lot of the nuance gets lost.”