Twitch Reverts Its 'Artistic Nudity' Policy After Concerns Over AI-Generated Nudes
Once they realised the mistake, they had to revert.
By Syazwan Bahri — 18 Dec 2023, 05:01 PM
Twitch has decided to revert after making what seems to be the most significant change to the live streaming platform's sexual content policy
Shortly after announcing its stance on allowing 'artistic nudity', Twitch is retracting its policy that permitted streamers to showcase illustrated, animated, or digital renderings of breasts, buttocks, and genitals.
This change follows Twitch's recent announcement of comprehensive updates to its sexual content policy, which simplified community guidelines and allowed nudity in specific contexts, particularly in art-centric streams.
The decision to reverse the policy comes in response to concerns raised by members of Twitch's art community
The community have long been advocating for the platform to ease restrictions on nudity in artistic expressions.
However, the community's recent worry stemmed from the substantial influx of AI-generated photorealistic nudes bombarding Twitch's art category following the recent policy update.
As of Friday, 15 December, Twitch has reinstated the ban on depictions of both real and fictional nudity. However, streamers will retain the ability to showcase nudity within mature-rated games.
Twitch's chief executive officer (CEO) admitted that they went too far with the changes
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy issued a statement within a couple of days of the change.
"Much of the content created has been met with community concern. These are concerns we share," Clancy said.
"Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change. Digital depictions of nudity present a unique challenge — AI can be used to create realistic images, and it can be hard to distinguish between digital art and photography," he added.
Twitch's sexual content policy will not be receiving new changes
The initial update aimed to simplify Twitch's stance on nudity, but the highly detailed guidelines ended up creating more ambiguity about what was acceptable on the platform.
While fictionalised depictions of fully exposed breasts, buttocks, and genitals were allowed, augmented reality avatars like VTubers were required to adhere to the same clothing guidelines as regular streamers.
Interestingly, displaying your underboobs remains off-limits, while sideboobs were not specifically addressed in the policy update.
