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AI-generated videos are flooding the internet, thanks in large part to OpenAI Sora 2People are now wondering if every video they see is fake. Twitch, the Amazon-owned live streaming platform, unveiled some AI features last week that could even those odds, at least to some extent.
At TwitchCon 2025 in San Diego, the platform said that artificial intelligence will be coming to the platform in more nuanced ways. Twitch, which allows people to live-stream themselves playing video games, wearing makeup or walking the streets of Tokyo, leans into the analytical side of artificial intelligence.
Feature called Auto clip will be AI helps creators quickly edit portions of a multi-hour stream To help preserve and publish the best moments on short-form social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Aside from using AI to quickly create clips, Twitch will also integrate with Meta AI Ray-Banallowing people to broadcast directly from their glasses.
“One of the biggest things we’re moving on quickly is understanding content,” said Mike Minton, chief product officer at Twitch. “What’s the streamer saying? What’s going on in the stream? What’s going on in the chat? Our ability now to understand and, as a result, open up a lot of things around things that help streamers directly.”
Only one in four streamers create clips after broadcasting, Minton said. Many top streamers have editors on staff to cut out the best parts of their streams for social media.
Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, among others, allows his community to clip live streams and Give them permission to earn advertising revenue. However, for smaller streamers, it can be difficult to sift through an eight-hour stream to find those perfect moments.
It solves the problem of creating short-form content, allowing streamers to focus on the important work of keeping audiences connected and introducing themselves to new people, Minton said.
Twitch is the second largest live streaming platform in the world, just behind YouTube, according to Stream charts. Purchased by Amazon for $970 million in 2014Twitch splurge 105 million monthly active users on its site in 2023. Many top streamers have become millionaires from ad revenue alone, per Leaked reports. Despite the impressive numbers, Twitch is still unprofitable, according to the 2024 report Wall Street Journal a report. There is a fear of it becoming a “zombie brand” – an acquisition that will be sidelined because it did not meet expectations – according to current and former employees who spoke to the newspaper. Although Amazon has not provided a breakdown of Twitch’s financial situation, recent statements and monetization claims suggest more needs to be done.
As a free-to-play platform, Twitch relies largely on advertising and brand deals for its revenue. In 2022, Twitch has tried to end the 70/30 ad split For the best streamers, hoping to make 50/50 the norm. In the end He canceled the decision. The site recently increased the number of ads that appear on streams and grants to creators Better insight into how ads can lead to larger payouts. These practices have It angered some fans. He has a twitch too It began to crack down on show programs – Software designed to artificially inflate viewership numbers – so that both streamers and advertisers have a better idea of how many people are actually watching. Due to these headwinds, Twitch went out of business 500 employees early 2024about 35% of its workforce.
“This is an excellent step to open the conversion funnel,” said Laura Martin, senior entertainment and internet analyst at the company. Needham & Company. “If this automation can create clips that can then be put on TikTok, Reels, or YouTube Shorts, boosting awareness to a new group of people or additional people.”
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Since Twitch is a long-form platform, the ability to easily distribute over short feeds can attract new and existing fans, according to Martin.
Twitch is also a very difficult platform to achieve success. Less than 1% of streamers earn the equivalent of minimum wage or more on the platform, per A 2021 leak. This excludes external income generated through brand deals. With Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Fortnite, and every other online platform vying for attention, finding an audience willing to spend hours watching a streamer and dropping their credit card for the extra subscription benefits is asking a lot. This is especially true when there is an almost unlimited amount of content ready to be consumed online, often for free. At least with AI, it can help streamers maximize their brand activation.
“You can imagine in the context of influencer marketing and making sure that when streamers do activations, we can verify that what they were supposed to do was done, and it helps us drive more sponsorship to streamers,” Minton said.
However, actual fan reaction to the AI features remains to be determined. The Twitch community is vocal, often voicing their disagreements loudly and forcing the company to focus.
“For two years now, Twitch has been building products for the type of creator it wants on the platform, rather than the type of creator the platform already has,” said Zach Busey, industry analyst and owner of Twitch. TOS.gg Newsletter, covering broadcast and creative spaces.
Bussey noted that products like Hype Chats, Guest Star, and Stories had failed to achieve success, and expressed concern that Auto Clip would not work as intended. “More importantly, I think it will further deepen the rift between his creative community,” he said.
Indeed, streamer and game developer Jason “Thor” Hall, who runs the channel Pirate programsHe expressed it Hated AI cutting tools on XSaying that he thinks they don’t do as good a job as the free tools currently available online. In fact, Minton responded by saying that he also doesn’t like AI, but that these tools would help 75% of streamers not cut right now.
Although AI tools are easy to use, they are expensive to operate. The ability to analyze content and clip or auto-caption streams for millions of streamers won’t come cheap.
“Well, on our scale, it certainly is,” Minton said. “There are a lot of things that affirmative action for all makes up for the cost of.”
Minton believes Twitch will discover the cost of AI over time. He also believes that as many streamers as possible should have access to these tools, but Twitch will need to balance broad availability.
Twitch sees AI as an agent layer to help streamers, most of whom don’t have teams of people behind them setting up and monitoring things. Minton wants AI to be used to automate safety on the platform, rather than having to rely on user reports. In chat, AI can be used to answer basic questions for new viewers so streamers don’t have to answer the same questions over and over again as new people enter their community. He also sees AI as a way to help streamers expand their creative options, for example, using the technology to create a dungeon master for a Dungeons & Dragons-type experience.
As AI technology improves, Minton sees automatic dubbing as a way to expand his fan base. For example, a streamer in Spain can use automatic AI dubbing for English broadcasts, where it sounds completely natural.
Although the idea of AI tools is interesting, it’s all about implementation. If AI ends up causing more headaches, it won’t have the desired effect.
“Knowing this community, as the feature is released, more creators will speak out, creating a PR battle that can’t be won unless the feature is flawless in implementation,” Posey said. “And this is where my doubts creep in, because history is not on their side in taking it right out of the gate.”
