Amazon factual lawsuit: Twitch streams used for AI training

The tech giant Amazon and its subsidiary Twitch have been sued in the U.S. by a streamer from the latter platform, who accuses Jeff Bezos's company of using his videos to train its artificial intelligence model without notifying him.

Warren Pandiscia, a content creator from Connecticut with about a thousand followers on Twitch, has taken legal action against the e-commerce company. He claims that the company illegally copied millions of his and other streamers' videos to develop its AI products without obtaining their consent or negotiating licenses.

According to Pandiscia, this activity began in 2024, with no option to opt out. Furthermore, he argues that these actions by the major tech company cost him money and deprived him of control over his work.

Thus, the plaintiff alleges breach of implied and explicit contract, unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices. He also requests the Northern District of California court for an injunction, as well as compensation for damages, restitution, and the return of illicitly obtained profits.

“Content creators, like the plaintiff and other members of the class action, will never be able to recover the intellectual property copied and illegally used by the defendants to train Amazon's generative AI," the accusation states.

"Once the AI processes the content, it is stored in its neural network and cannot be deleted or retracted. The defendants' actions constitute an abuse and exploitation of the content creators' work for their own benefit,” it adds.

Interestingly, Amazon announced just a couple of weeks ago that Twitch would enable a new setting for Amazon to use creators' videos and live streams to train its AI, and it would be included by default (though it would be possible to disable it).

Twitch has confirmed that Amazon can use broadcasts, past streams, clips, chats, images, and texts for these purposes.

The measure did not sit well with the community, although they did not suspect that the company might have been doing something similar for a couple of years already, according to Pandiscia.

At the time of writing this article, neither Twitch nor Amazon had made official statements regarding this litigation.