Twitch is rolling back its new rules allowing “artistic nudity” just two days after updating its sexual content policy.
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced the change in a statement on Friday. He said the company realized the rule went “too far,” noting that AI can create realistic images that make it hard to distinguish between digital art and photography.
“While I wish we would have predicted this outcome, part of our job is to make adjustments that serve the community,” Clancy said in the statement. “I apologize for the confusion that this update has caused.”
The original update to Twitch’s sexual content policy followed a new trend in which some women streaming on the platform used certain camera angles to appear topless, Kotaku reported.
According to The Verge, Twitch’s specific mention of AI in Friday’s announcement seems to be related to concerns that the new policy might allow artists to display AI-generated “deepfakes” and pass them off as permitted art. In March, Twitch banned deepfakes, a technique where AI technology is used to swap a person’s face onto another person’s body.
The ban on deepfakes came after Twitch streamer Atrioc was caught watching deepfake porn of other gamers during a stream in February. Experts told Business Insider at the time that deepfake porn can cause extreme psychological trauma to those who are depicted in it without consent.
According to Clancy, Twitch originally updated the “artistic nudity” policy following years of complaints from artists, who called the company’s content policies “limiting.”
“In making this update, we were trying to be responsive to these requests and allow the thriving artist community on Twitch to utilize the human form in their art,” Clancy wrote.
Still, Clancy said that some streamers on the platform created content that violated the new policy when it launched on Wednesday, adding that the company worked quickly to remove the content and enforce disciplinary policies on the channels.
Real and fictional depictions of nudity are now — again — no longer allowed on Twitch, save for some content found in mature-rated games, according to the statement.
While the “artistic nudity” policy is no more, several new changes to Twitch’s sexual content rules are still in effect, including allowing content that “deliberately highlights breasts, buttocks or pelvic region” and body painting on “female-presenting breasts and/or buttocks regardless of gender,” as long as it’s labeled with Sexual Themes, according to Variety. Dances like “twerking, grinding, and pole dancing” are now allowed without a label, according to the outlet.
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