Amazon faces class action lawsuit over AI training on Twitch content

Amazon is facing a lawsuit over its move to train its AI models on videos people broadcast on the popular streaming platform Twitch.

The move faced backlash from users when it was announced in August - with people having the option to opt-out if they do not want their data used this way.

The class action lawsuit has been brought on behalf of millions of streamers who use Twitch, alleging its parent company Amazon used their videos to train AI without their permission or proper compensation.

Twitch and Amazon have not commented on the lawsuit.

Streamers on the platform reportedly produced more than 215 million hours of content in the first few months of 2026 alone.

The lawsuit was brought by Connecticut-based streamer Warren Pandiscia.

It claims Twitch breached its contract with users by using that content as AI training data for Amazon's models without obtaining their permission.

It adds streamers should not have their work commercially exploited to develop AI without consent or compensation.

The lawsuit seeks damages for streamers whose content was allegedly used to train AI, as well as an order preventing Amazon from continuing the alleged practice.

It is not clear when Amazon began collecting Twitch users' data to train its AI models.

Twitch's chief product officer Mike Minton previously said he did not know if users' data had been scraped for training before it gave people the opportunity to opt-out.

He said he was unsure what Amazon "has done in terms of model training and what they've used and not used".

In Twitch's own FAQs about AI training, it said a person's audio might be used to "refine models that create speech to text".

It said this would help improve automatic subtitles on Twitch streams as well as Amazon videos.

Those that want to disable the feature would need to navigate to the Settings tab in their Streamer Dashboard, click the Security and Privacy tab, then scroll down to near the bottom of the options and toggle off "training for Generative AI".

However, the opt-out only applies to individual streams, meaning creators' content could still be used for AI training when they appear in a stream where the feature remains enabled.

Amazon, which bought Twitch for nearly $1bn (£740m) in 2014, has made AI a major focus as it competes with Google, Meta and other tech giants.