This is incredibly disappointing and upsetting. What was the point of artists in the creator clubs to create 30 emotes to share if we're not going to use even one of them as a global emote? To gather a talent of artists together in a discord and not utilise their talents is a waste. To turn to AI is to spit on their efforts is criminal.

Honest opinion?

If anyone chooses to use AI slop over paying actual artists, I will just believe that you guys cannot pay people and don't care about quality.

Gen AI is theft and this emote would have been cheap enough to make without it. Give me a REAL catinthechat please

U have an art category for a reason, twitch.

Ai bros are not your only user base

I could paint this, most of us could paint this. People are already looking for alternative sites to twtich, dont give them the another reason to leave the platform

I really hope that our concerns and disapproval about this will be heard...

want real emotes

Did they really let the rights expire for actual, human-made emotes die for the sake of AI slop?

That's P A T H E T I C. Broke-*** behavior, wild to see coming from a company owned by AMAZON.

I've been streaming on Twitch for 12 years, and I'm staying here because I believe that Twitch can be examplary to their community and the rest of the world, whilst promoting good ethics, may it be inclusivity, tolerence, defence of artist rights, charity work and environemental causes to name a few.

If that emote has been created through AI, please, remove it.
If it has been created by an artist, offer an informative BLOG post with the artist interview or some such, to clarify the situation.

THANK YOU for reading and considering our plea.

As neat as generative AI is. It should not be used as a final product, especially when you have access to a lot of artists that are ready and willing to make art and emotes for you

Even if you don't want to pay for it, taking a photo of a cat and edit a funny hat on it gives a way better impression to the public and shows that you care about putting in actual effort into your platform

For a website so teaming with talented artist's who would've chomped at the bit to create such an emote, twitch effectively tells them that they're not appreciated and instead of working with the twitch art community they generate a soulless emote created using stolen artwork and photos, it is a spit in the face to ALL creatives that use this platform and tells us that it doesn't matter what we do, twitch would rather give recognition to a faceless soulless robot that destroys rainforests for a PNG than pay an actual artist on this platform $100. Twitch should be ASHAMED.

I get this is probably easier from a financial point of view, but this is not worth those saved pennies at all. This is spitting in the face of all the talented artists on the platform

i really wonder how much coal we burned for that one ugly cat picture

Lads are ye not holy ashamed? Especially with such a huge art community? There's no excuse, and there's no tolerance for AI slop

This is an incredibly bad look for Twitch, a platform entirely built on the creativeness of its streamers and community. Moreso, it feels like a complete slap in the face.

How hard is it to just grab a cat picture from staff and put a hat on it if you do not want to hire and actual artist? disgusting.

future is so fcking bleak if we're burning down forests to make a fcking EMOTE

I gotta agree with everyone. You could've very easily hired an actual artist to make this or even just used one of many programs out there to put a hat on a real cat, but you went lazy with very sloppy and lazy A.I. This shouldn't be what happens. So this is something you should very much consider changing as the negative PR is defiantly not worth it. You're meant to be for the creators and not against them. This is another one of many updates where you've disregarded creators again.

If twitch is going to use AI that just makes me want to consider other platforms.

Twitch, step the **** up man. Do better than whatever nonsense you have been on for the past months

Even setting moral and potential legal issues aside:
A multi-million dollar company being so uninspired and lazy, that instead of just having an actual picture of a cat and taking 10 minutes to photoshop a santa hat on it, they opt for writing a single prompt and taking the first result.

Especially ironic since Twitch as a platform is built on the back and labor of creatives. And I don't just mean artist and virtual streamers.
Every single content creator on Twitch is a creative in how they make their content

This move is very short sighted, and a slippery slope for Twitch to become an
unimaginative and hostile envirorment for their creators, which eventually can only spell their doom when those very creators leave for a competitor.