Streamer files class action against Twitch and Amazon over AI training on his content
A Connecticut-based Twitch streamer, Warren Pandiscia, has filed a class action lawsuit against Twitch and Amazon, alleging his streams were used without consent to train Amazon's AI models. The suit cites breach of contract and unfair enrichment at creators' expense.
A Twitch streamer based in Connecticut, Warren Pandiscia, filed a class action lawsuit this week against Twitch and its parent company Amazon. First reported by Courthouse News, the complaint alleges that Amazon never sought or obtained consent from Pandiscia to use his Twitch streams and videos as a dataset to fuel the company's AI products.
Earlier this month, Twitch Support announced on X that it had introduced an option allowing users to opt out of having their channel content used to train generative AI models across Amazon's businesses. Shortly afterward, during an episode of Twitch's recurring Patch Notes broadcast, the company's chief product officer, Mike Minton, was asked why the AI training setting isn't opt-in by default. He responded that if it were opt-in, essentially no one would choose to participate.
What the lawsuit claims
The new complaint argues that by using streamers' content as free training material for separate commercial AI products, Twitch and Amazon breached their contractual agreements with users. It also accuses the companies of unfairly profiting at streamers' expense, claiming creators lost money or property as a result of the companies' practices.
Amazon is not alone in facing such litigation. Earlier this year, three YouTube creators filed a separate class action against Apple, accusing it of scraping their copyrighted content without permission to train its own AI models.
