Twitch AI class action: inept and written with ChatGPT
The gaming world was greatly cheered on Friday by the news of Twitch getting dragged into court over their plan to use all the Twitch streams for AI training. Almeida Law Group is using Twitch streamer Warren Pandiscia to bring a class action against Twitch and its owner, Amazon. [Courthouse News;…
The gaming world was greatly cheered on Friday by the news of Twitch getting dragged into court over their plan to use all the Twitch streams for AI training. Almeida Law Group is using Twitch streamer Warren Pandiscia to bring a class action against Twitch and its owner, Amazon. [Courthouse News; complaint, PDF] The cause of action is not copyright. Courts keep finding that AI training is fair use. Instead, Almeida is claiming that Amazon’s training on the streams is a breach of implied contract and good faith; that the training is unjust enrichment; for breach of express contract by using the streams other than to run the Twitch service; and for unfair competition. How seriously should we take this? I would first assume: not very. Most class actions don’t go anywhere. They have to get the judge to certify there is a group they represent and that they have a cause of action. Anyone can file a case, it’s not really a news story. And the complaint itself is a bit lightweight. If your first claim is implicit terms that aren’t written, is that the best you’ve got? The other claims are no stronger. The substance is that Twitch and Amazon acted outside the terms of service. I mean, sure. But can you show actual damages? The other reason not to take this case so seriously is that the lawyers wrote the complaint with ChatGPT. Paragraph 15 says: However, until now, they have not explicitly stated that such materials could be used to train generative AI models. This is an action in the US under US law. This sentence is cited to the Mexican terms of service — in Spanish — so they weren’t paying a lot of attention when they wrote this. The cited web page address ends: utm_source=chatgpt.com They pasted in the wrong version because they just used whatever ChatGPT told them. Almeida is a class action specialist. Class action suits are what they do. And this is sloppy work.These bar admitted lawyers bashed this complaint out with a chatbot — without bothering to check it. At least the one citation to a lawsuit in this complaint actually exists. It’s citing a fact to a claim in a different ongoing class action against Amazon. In that one, a group of YouTube creators are suing Amazon for scraping their YouTube videos. The closest that group has to a claim is that Amazon must have evaded YouTube anti-scraping measures! [complaint, PDF] In that case, Amazon just filed a motion to dismiss for a failure to state a claim. The streamers haven’t shown that Amazon evaded the alleged controls, let alone that scraping these completely public videos caused the creators specific financial damages. [motion, PDF] I suspect this new Twitch complaint will get the same sort of response. Almeida don’t really show that all this cost Pandiscia actual money. And with 900 Twitch followers, would a settlement get him ten dollars or something? I wish Almeida and Pandiscia all the luck with this suit, because Amazon deserve many bad things, and especially around AI. But they will need the luck. Video — PodcastSource: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business