Twitch U-turns on ‘artistic nudity’ policy

Just days after streaming platform Twitch said it was going to allow certain kinds of sexual content, the platform has reversed its decision.

“Effective today, we are rolling back the artistic nudity changes,” CEO Dan Clancy said in a statement on Friday.

“Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium.”

Some of the imagery that was allowed under the new guidelines was “met with community concern”, he said.

Last week Twitch issued a lengthy sexual content policy update to allow previously banned content, including:

The primary change involved the requirement for content creation labels on certain streams. Viewers were to provide consent before watching such a stream.

But that policy is no longer in place. “Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change,” Mr Clancy said.

“Digital depictions of nudity present a unique challenge – artificial intelligence can be used to create realistic images, and it can be hard to distinguish between digital art and photography.”

The decision came after an outpouring of concern online from Twitch’s art community, about the volume of AI-generated nudes which began to bombard Twitch’s art category since the policy change.

The only exception remains “incidental nudity” that appears in mature-rated games.

“While I wish we would have predicted this outcome, part of our job is to make adjustments that serve the community,” wrote Mr Clancy.

“I apologize for the confusion that this update has caused.”