#AO3 Data Scrape

[livlaughlove07]

i feel so terrible doing this but i had to. i locked all my ao3 works under archive only because i learned about the extent of the data scraping that happened. as much as i love writing and i love sharing it with as many people as possible, i cannot allow the works of which i have poured my heart, my soul, and most importantly, my time into to be scraped up and fed heartlessly to an ai bot. so for now, it’s only visible to archive users.

[jayysnotjoyful]

hey, anyone on ao3 who was a part of the data scrape;

if you are in america, I will help you file a DMCA against the website hosting the data set. sorry i can’t provide help to other countries, as I’m only educated in american law.

[opal-apparition]

25APR2025 AO3 Data Scrape on Hugging Face

There is a new A03 Datascrape on HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Chat-Error/archiveofourown-newest The "archiveofourown-newest" dataset contains approximately 14,806,149 works, while Archive of Our Own publicly listed a total of approximately 14,880,000 works as of April 23, 2025. If your works preceed that date, it's likely they are in this dataset. I submitted a DCMA takedown to HuggingFace at dmca@huggingface.co , and if you have bandwidth I recommend you do the same. You can also report the dataset by clicking the three dots and posting a dispute, however you'll likely find the poster unhelpful. Do BOTH. Should you not know what to say, there are plentiful DCMA takedown templates online, or you can copy mine.

Note that the people that posted the dataset are not the actual agents to act on the DCMA, HuggingFace is, and they're likely to try to circumvent whatever it is you post by saying:

Hello, Thank you for identifying the relevant works. Please note that you must include valid contact information, including name, address, email address, and telephone number if possible. Once this is done, we may process your request. Sincerely, Anonymous

Funny and notable that they chose to sign this "Anonymous."

Edit: In case it's not abundantly clear, do not give these random thieves your personal info! GO THROUGH HUGGINGFACE. 2nd Edit: as of 6PM EST, the data set has been taken down!

3rd Edit: as of 27APr2025... They uploaded it as a different dataset

[witless-winion1]

beating AI off of my fanfic with a baseball bat

[indefenseofmasochism]

the huggingface ao3 database thread again

embarrassing.

like damn bro i consent to having sex with your mom, that doesnt mean all ao3 authors consent to having sex with your mom. she’s freaky as fuck and that’s just not a ride every man can survive

[hanna81024]

im so so thankful my fics were spared from the data scrape since i only started writing in march.

for all the authors whose fics *were* scraped, im sending love and light and hoping they get taken down + that no ai is trained using your hard work. its wishful thinking, yes, but its something.

people stealing and profiting off of your art and hard work is the worst feeling. im so sorry :/

[candiiplanets]

I hope whoever scraped Ao3 for AI training gets hit with the Ao3 authors curse like we’ve never seen before.

Sincerely, an Ao3 writer who’s work got scraped (and has experienced the curse)

[goldenavenger02]

My works and AI

As most of you know, Ao3 was victim to a MASSIVE data scrape by an AI program called HuggingFace last week. As all of you should know, I am incredibly anti AI. It steals work from artists, it propels global warming and it tends to target those most vulnerable in our society.

Now, because AI is so integrated in how we interact with the internet now, there is only so much I can do to avoid it. But there is one thing I can do, although it breaks my heart.

As of today, all of my works on my GoldenAvenger02 account, as well as my Brentinator account, are only visible to registered users of Ao3.

I went back and forth on this a lot; on one hand, I want my works to be accessible to all people, even if they can't make an Ao3 account. But on the other hand, I've posted nearly 200 fics across both accounts at this point, and I know that if I continue to leave my fics open for guests to see, that there is a chance that all of my fics, my nearly 10 years of writing, will be stolen from me to train some shitty AI program.

This was a really hard decision for me, but this is what I've decided. I will still be posting my Ninjago fics on here for sure, but if you do not plan on making an Ao3 account, please let me know what other fics I should be posting on here.

And finally. Please, for the love of whatever higher power or lack thereof you believe in, stop fucking using AI. I don't care WHAT it is. Change your browser (I use Ecosia), switch away from Google Docs, teach yourself how to write and draw, delete Chat GPT and c.ai.

Whenever you use AI, you are stealing hard work. You are making our planet unliveable. You are actively contributing to millions of people losing access to their work.

[its-isobel33]

So... how did the UK rights for AI bullshit go? Did artists win this one?

The AI bill didn't go through, but unfortunately It's less winning and more pushing back the threat.

The house of Lords (a part of the government made to examine bills/changes to the law) rejected the proposed AI copyright bill with a majority vote due to a number of reasons like not enough evidence of it actually being beneficial and the immoral nature of AI data-scraping. But sadly just because its been rejected doesn't mean it's gone, just pushed back...

Right now the government has said if the bill is to go through there needs to be major changes to it and an economic impact assessment (basically seeing if the potential money earned by AI outweighs the money lost to creatives) and things will be brought again to the house of Lords next week to decide again. Thankfully though everything points to them getting another rejection.

Things aren't great right now, but its still good news and a major step to getting this AI copyright nonsense stomped out. The important thing is to keep spreading the word if you're outside the UK and making sure your rejection of this bill is clear to the government if you are in the UK. (contact MP's/Local Officials ect.)

Artists/creatives won this battle, if we work hard and keep our voices heard we can win the war too!

Sources/News:

[hyperfixationjunkie]

Because of AI data scraping

Hemlock, Nightshade, Queen Anne’s Lace and Dancing on the Clock will no longer be available to non-registered archive users. I hate that I have to do this, but I want to protect my works from further exploitation and blatant copyright violation for the purposes of generative AI.

[malleusdraconiasbride]

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR MY AO3 FICS

PLEASE NOTE: I explicitly do NOT give consent for any of my works to be used for AI training of any kind, now or at any point in the future. All of my works are now archive-locked because of an AI data scrape.

I apologize to anyone without an account who was reading my works previously, but I refuse to let my hard work be taken advantage of by these disgusting scraping bots.

I will continue to post my work here on Tumblr and AO3 both, but if you want to bookmark or save them on your AO3, you will have to be logged in.

[jeahreading]

had to archive lock tots and coffee cuz this is getting scary oh my god

[lovely-dragon-of-mine]

For the time being, I have had to lock all my fics on ao3 due to the bot scrap. I hope to unlock them all soon, but I won't be risking my work. Sorry to anyone reading them as a guest.

This is really frustrating as a writer and as far as I know there isn't much I can do about it. All I can do is hope my works have avoided the scraps so far.

[indefenseofmasochism]

aight

huggingface ao3 scrapers try not to create a false narrative challenge level impossible. try not to commit hasty generalization challenge. try to touch grass challenge.

here’s the thread if yall wanna reblog with the logical fallacies yall find in their arguments.

[frownyalfred]

How are you live what's happening with ao3 and the AI? Does it discourage you in any way from publishing your stories?

Great question. I haven't archive locked my stories and don't plan to. That's a personal decision I've made for myself and my own content, and that doesn't mean I don't wholeheartedly support my fellow authors who do so. But I'm of the (again personal) opinion that my works already have been scraped, and will continue to be scraped in some capacity. As have all of my texposts on here.

I appreciate the work the OTW is doing to take down data on other sites where it has been scraped. I think that's absolutely the right course of action. But personally, I am under no illusions that by archive-locking my fics, I am 100% preventing the scraping/sharing/AI use of my content. And at this point, even when we first learned of that big "scrape" a while back, it was too late.

My goal is to make my content as widely available for readers as possible, which comes with drawbacks. Archive-locking fics came with a significant reduction in hits/comments/kudos for some authors, and I decided that was a risk I personally did not want to take. Especially when, again, I was of the belief that many of my fics had already been scraped/were vulnerable to being scraped before we learned about these mass-scraping incidents.

Additionally, I'm quite certain people have been feeding my fics into AI processors, ChatGPT, etc, for a while now. It's not something I have control over, and people will continue to do it even when they know it's wrong. Even with ao3 accounts.

I don't own my fanfiction content, I can't make money off of it, and I don't want to. This would be a very different conversation if I did. Truthfully, my only hope is that by continuing to write a/b/o, and large amounts of it, I can "spike" whatever dataset is using my fics. That thought brings me joy, even if it's a little silly and far-fetched with these better algorithms.

[enneadau]

EMERGENCY AUTHOR UPDATE

I feel like this needs to be warned about. Everything on Ao3 that isn't set to private, HAS been data scraped and fed to 3 data sites that provide data for AI training, including writing and artwork.

Yes, this includes my entire Ennead series and everything else I've ever written and posted. As well as anything you all have written but not made private.

Ao3's legal team is fighting it and one site has made the data unavailable, but the other two aren't based in the USA so the fight is harder.

This is frustrating and upsetting news, especially for those of us who now need to pick between our Guest readers who have supported us for a long time and protecting the hard work that we've put our hearts and souls into and I just ask that we support each other and our choices during this time.

The link here has more details but from now on, until I can be sure there's a way to protect my work, which I've spent decades writing and planning, my stories will be posted for members of the site only.