#my own ai archive

[wilmontstudioarchive]

Ravensden, Bedfordshire, England

Mid 2010s

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

-> people stealing, binding and selling fics on Etsy, risking everything that AO3 has built since the Anne Rice lawsuits

-> AI scraping being everywhere and Gen Z seeing nothing wrong with using AI to "help" fanfiction or outright "write it" for them, while older fanfic authors have struggled for years to perfect the style you love

-> comments being down across the board and consumption culture being at an all time high. a fic gets 800 notes practically overnight and doesn't get a single comment (and sometimes I literally have to beg for comments/feedback on my fics when I know that hundreds of people are reading them)

-> me, grinding my teeth while pouring my heart and soul into a 40k fic that I know will be forgotten by fandom in a month or could possibly be stolen to be sold as a "novel": I do this because I love this. I do this because I love this. I do this because it's my passion. I don't want to quit doing something that I love so much.

[otterandterrier]

An explanation:

In 2022, Common Crawl scrapped Ao3 to train AI. In December of the same year, Ao3 added code to stop it from happening again. However, as they explain, "Putting systems in place that attempt to block all scraping would be difficult or impossible without also blocking legitimate uses of the site." This means that individual scrapers can still collect data, even on a large scale, although they're working to find a solution to this. They're also, at the moment, not banning AI-generated works.

In the meantime, they recommend restricting works to registered users only. However, and as they know, this isn't an ideal or ultimate solution.

First, because it would add a barrier to legitimate users who want to access the site without an account for different reasons.

Second, because real registered users who think they're entitled to your work can still steal it and feed it to AI for personal use, which is something people are already bragging about.

And third, because bots can still create accounts for mass scraping--in fact, there's a concerning wave of obvious bot comments happening right now, and speculation is that it's related to making AI tools come off as legitimate traffic.

Personally, I'm very concerned and considering restricting my works. But I also hate that we're being put in this position, I don't think it's fair to me or my readers, and I'm reluctant of gatekeeping my fic from legitimate readers.

So I wanted to see where other writers stand right now, and I also wanted to show readers who might be considering stealing fic with AI "because it was abandoned" or whatever your shitty excuse is the damage that you're contributing to. Fandom is not a market. You're not entitled to our work, even if it's abandoned.

I might hate myself for this later, but please reblog for a larger sample size!! You're welcome to add alternative solutions, thoughts, etc., but if you add any obnoxious comments about how stealing people's art with AI is good, actually, and fandom creators are meanies, I will break into your house and bite you.

[blackkatdraws2]

They are my lifeline

[individual drawings below]

[killrisma]

Babe wake up! Supernatural fanfics corrupted the datasets for AI writing companies!!!

[ao3-shenanigans]

This is as good a time as ever to say:

Y’all, send me your favorite (non-explicit) fic recs and I’ll check them out!

If there not for a fandom I’m in (which is a lot of fandoms actually) I’ll guess what parts are cannon vs fannon and we can make a game of it or something- keep life interesting lol

If it’s for a fandom I know a lot about, I’ll share my favorite parts and we can go feral together :D

Edit/additional note:

general tag: #ao3 shenanigans

fic recs: #ao3 shenanigans’ recommend

Fanfic game: #ao3 shenanigans fanfic game

My doodles: #ao3 shenanigans doodle

Ai stuff: #my vendetta against ai ✌🏻

[kitaurita]

Shoutout to AO3 for being one of the few platforms to explicitly forbid any of the site’s contents for being used to train commercial AI.

It’s not really surprising given that AO3 is not for profit and the CEOs of most social media platforms would sell your soul to the devil for a single corn chip, but I still wanted to shoutout our beloved fanfiction site for putting its users first

[bean-writes]

Okay... So I don't really do fanart, or at least I haven't until now. But I was in the mood to draw and I had an idea for a collection of sketches inspired by a fanfiction I read so... Here's my first attempt at Crow!Corvo/Daud fanart!

[icantthink-ofagoodname]

"Why can't I see your phone?"

Simple, it's because:

[eltaninbubba]

The symphony of their entangled hearts beats solely for one another.

“You carved yourself into my soul, left your fingerprints on my darkest thoughts, and now I can’t remember where I end and you begin."

[wilmontstudioarchive]

Odell, Bedfordshire, England

Late 2000s

[selfish-wanderer]

You ever find a niche fandom and it just hits you like a brick? We're having symbolism even in the way the fanfiction is being written with this one!

[kindahoping4forever]

Happy Sunday ❤️

[elenyafinwe]

AI bullshit stay the fuck out of ao3

We reached a point, where people unironically post AI genereated fanfics on ao3. ChatGBT was and is trained by exploiting the works of writers like us. It scrapes pages like ao3 for literary work to learn from it without the consent of the authors. (That’s why I locked all my works an ao3 to only logged in users.)

Fandom these days is not a friendly place anymore, where people come together and celebrate their favourite stories and characters by being creative. I wish it were and in the small circles I move it is. But here it is: Those are only small corners of a technically much wider community. But to be seen in this community, you need to churn out content and more content and more content. Especially us writers have it very hard in this enviornment. We can’t easily share vips like an artist can, writing is mostly done in solidarity. I can’t stream my progress on Twitch or any other platform. How boring would it be to watch me typing words into Word without saying a word, because I have to concentrate on what I’m writing? It often takes me day, weeks, months or even YEARS to complete even one single work and most people are even too lazy to click one button for a kudo.

Fanfics are one of the backbones of fandom and we writers are so utterly poorly treated. Artists beg for years now that you share their content, and they are absolutely right to do so! But when I post updates on my writing here, I don’t even get likes. Likes do nothing to bring my content to a wider audience.

Fanwork is done out of a passion, and shared because we want to share this passion with someone else. Is has no value, if no one interacts with it. Write for yourself is bullshit. Yes, I do create the content I myself want to see. But if that would be my only motivation there is no need to share it online, to go over it dozens of times to polish it to the best of my abilities and spend dozens if not hundrets of hours upon it, to create it out of nothing.

Fanfics have it much harder than fanart due to the nature of the craft. It takes only moments to look upon a fanart, but hours, even days to read a fanfic. Not everyone is willig to invest so much time into something. So I understand, where it comes from, than fanfics don’t get that much interaction than fanart. Doesn’t say I appreciate it. But a total lack of interaction is utterly discouraging.

To stay on top of a timeline, you need to put out content regularly. For some reason I was obsessed enough to be able to post rather regularly over the past two, almost three years. But even one chapter per week or one every two weeks apparently is not fast enough for some, despite this being an utterly crazy schedule.

Because those now go to chatgpt and tell this monstrous thing “hey, write my fanfic. I just click a few buttons and then c&p that shit into ao3 and call it a day.”

Writing is about creativity, about sharing a passion, about telling a story. Art is inherently a human trait. What value has it, if some machine does it for us and apparently is very bad at it? You stole our works and now you even steal our passion just for some fast clicks on tiktok or whatever.

Honestly, the only time where I think a mean comment ist justified on ao3 is when you encounter any AI written bullshit. Roast them, roast them to hell. May you stup your toe every morning and may your sleeves slip down every time you wash your hands, you soggy toasts.

AI bullshit is utterly missing the whole point of fanfic and it steals from us writers in every possible way. It steals our works, it steals our place in fandom, it steals our audience.

AI kills creativity. Stop stealing from us.

[ao3-shenanigans]

hey hi hello!

not sure if this has been asked (of if this is the right place to ask this) so apologies if it has, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of locking a fic? are the bots really going to steal my work? i'm concerned about AI but I also don't want to prevent people who might like my work and friends without an AO3 account from reading it!

ty <3

Good question!

Locking a fic essentially means that only folks logged in with an Ao3 account can access the fic. Aside from the Ai concern, people have been using it as a way to discourage harassment from anonymous users or making their personal work inaccessible to their irls who aren’t in fandom.

As for your ai concerns, according to the OTW announcement May 15, 2023:

“We've put in place certain technical measures to hinder large-scale data scraping on AO3, such as rate limiting, and we're constantly monitoring our traffic for signs of abusive data collection. We do not make exceptions for researchers or those wishing to create databases. Putting systems in place that attempt to block all scraping would be difficult or impossible without also blocking legitimate uses of the site.

With that said, it is an unfortunate reality that anything that is publicly available online can be used for reasons other than its initial intended purposes. In many cases, AI data collection traffic relies on the same techniques as the legitimate use cases above.”

They then go on to say: “You may want to restrict your work to Archive users only. While this will not block every potential scraper, it should provide some protection against large-scale scraping.”

Ultimately it’s up to you and what you want to prioritize!

This is a good post that details the process for getting an account with Ao3

[maylilithreign]

Announcement to any of my readers:

Due to the newest shitty AI website RIVD, I am now locking my AO3 works to registered users only. I never wanted to do this, I want guests who don't have an account yet to be able to read. I know my stories have likely been scraped in the past, but this feels different.

So if you are still using a guest account to read and no longer can, I apologize. Please sign up for an AO3 account! It's worth having anyway ♥️