AMAZON AND TWITCH SUED OVER AI TRAINING ON STREAMER VIDEOS

Amazon and Twitch face a class action lawsuit brought by Connecticut-based streamer Warren Pandiscia, alleging the companies used videos from millions of streamers to train artificial intelligence models without permission or compensation. The lawsuit claims Twitch breached its contract with users by deploying their content as AI training data for Amazon's models. The companies seek damages for affected streamers and an order preventing Amazon from continuing the alleged practice. Twitch and Amazon have not commented on the lawsuit.

Twitch announced in August that it would use streamer content to train AI, offering users an option to opt out rather than requiring opt-in consent. Mike Minton, Twitch's chief product officer, stated that "if it was opt-in, nobody would opt in" when asked why the setting defaulted to participation. Minton previously said he was uncertain what data Amazon had collected before the opt-out option became available and what the company had used for model training. Twitch's own guidance stated that audio might be used to "refine models that create speech to text". Streamers on the platform produced more than 215 million hours of content in the first few months of 2026 alone, according to reported figures.

The complaint alleges that streamers lost money or property through what it characterises as unlawful and fraudulent practices by the two companies. It remains unclear when Amazon began collecting Twitch users' data for AI training purposes. This lawsuit joins other legal actions against technology companies over AI training practices; three YouTubers filed a separate class action lawsuit against Apple earlier this year, accusing the company of scraping copyrighted content for AI model development.