What is Frosty Tools?
Frosty Tools is an AI Twitch Chat Bot, that streamers can add to their streams to provide LLM features, such as customised shoutout messages, stream summaries when ads run, and customised raid messages. Providing all these services for free.
Frosty Tools rose some time after the initial ChatGPT hype, and many streamers still have them as part of their stream since.
Why I have a problem with Frosty Tools?
One of the features, as mentioned, is the stream summaries. Frosty Tools listen to what chat is saying, crunch them up into a summary, for viewers and streamers to see while ad is running.
My problem with this? I didn’t give Frosty Tools permission to use MY messages and process it with an LLM to “understand” what I’m saying.
I have no problems with other Twitch bots listening for commands or keywords, because they’re not trying to “understand” my messages, they just want to listen for keywords or commands.
On the other hand, Frosty Tools reads, stores and processes every single chat message through an LLM without the chatters consent.
Potential violation
https://frostytools.com/legal/policies/privacy-policy/
The information provided under Frosty Tools’ privacy policy is only written for streamers (who authenticated with their services) in mind, not the chatters’ data it also collects from.
I would argue that the streamers’ chat does not fully belong to the streamer, but the messages sent by chatters belong to them as well, thus requiring explicit approval to be fed into Frosty Tools’ service.
If this applies, then Frosty Tools would be in violation of GDPR Article 5:
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/
5.1(a) processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’);
5.1(b) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall, in accordance with Article 89(1), not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes (‘purpose limitation’);
Final Thoughts
I dislike Frosty Tools collecting my data without my knowledge. Whenever Frosty Tools appear in other streamers’ chat, I usually leave with few exceptions.
I am skeptical about Frosty Tools business model. AI is not cheap, running it in many streamers’ chat for free is an act of burning money. Either Frosty Tools is not sustainable, or they are earning revenue through other, undisclosed means.