#ao3 and ai

[chemicalarospec]

Ao3 and AI

They made a short blog post here and I dearly hope you read it, but the most important thing is:

1. Most AIs are trained off one dataset, the Common Crawl dataset.

2. Common Crawl can be be blocked in two lines of code.

3. Ao3 implemented that code in December 2022.

4. Fics that were already scraped will remain scraped and there's nothing we can do about it, but any fics posted after they put in that code will not be used to train AI unless the AI-makers make a new data-scraper.

5. Ao3 has also put code in place to slow down scrapers and they check their traffic for signs of abuse.

In short, you do not need to set your fic to members-only to stop it from being part of the Common Crawl dataset, though it will add another layer of protection for other scrapers if you feel really strongly about it. Please note that the blog post says locking your fic "will not block every potential scraper."

[writingwife-83]

Guys, if you read on AO3 please try to create an account. So many of us writers are going to be forced to lock down our fics to registered users out of necessity to help keep AI away, and it kills us because we don’t want to stop any of you from reading.

AO3 is invite only. So if you know an AO3 user, ask if they have an invitation to give you (we’re given invite codes to share with others who want to join) because that’s an easy way to get in. If you don’t know someone you can ask, this is AO3’s instructions for requesting one from them…

I know this seems like an extra step and maybe you don’t think you need it and can just read from people who haven’t locked their fics. But this isn’t just about you as the reader. If you enjoy fics and you want to keep them coming, this is how you support your favorite writers! If our stats and comments plummet, I guarantee writing is going to start going down as well. Nobody wants that! So please consider making an account and signal boosting this as well! 🙏🏻

**NOTE: AO3 indicates (as of today) there’s 48k some people in the queue for invites and they’re sending out about 5k per day. That’s not a bad wait at all!!**

[the-bar-sinister]

Look, I'm going to be honest, I don't care whether people feeding other fans' fanfiction into AI is "legal" or "illegal".

What it is, is rude, entitled, and disrespectful of your fellow fans.

[simper-maximus]

Just a reminder for fanfic authors:

Fanfiction will ALWAYS be superior to character.ai

Please don't ever stop writing!!

[southfarthing]

what with all this talk of fanfic and ai and feeding other people's work without permission into ai programmes to 'finish' a fanfic or whatever... it's just showing how people see fic as 'content'? a fanfic as something mass-produced and official, something to consume at a distance and then talk about in a vacuum? something to use for your own purposes and something over which you have a claim?

fanfic is written by fans like you. written out of love and passion and a lot of effort and hard work, so that the author can share their enthusiasm for the characters and stories with other fans. like you. they aren't these untouchable, faceless people above you – they're your peers. gifsets, fanart, fanfic – they're all made by your peers. mutuals. friends.

if you want to know more about the fic, talk to the author! so many fic writers leave their socials in the end notes of their fics – talk to them! they're not going to be affronted or judgemental. chances are, they're going to be over the moon that you like their work and want to engage and discuss the characters and the themes etc. they made you happy with their fic, and you would be making them so happy in return! (and what does a happy writer do? write more!)

as a fic writer, I made one of my closest tumblr friends because she read my fic and left a really nice comment, and then we got talking and brainstorming loads of headcanons and fic ideas together! fic writers want to talk! if you enjoy someone's presence and contributions in a fandom, let them know!

and for the love of all that is good, don't feed someone's hard work into an ai programme!!! whether you post it (which is just horrible tbh) is beside the point – you're facilitating the plagiarism of their fic!

[no-nightingalez]

[buttersteps]

this is how we do it… the a/b/o uprising starts now

[z-mizcellaneous-z]

listen. all im saying is it would be iconic as fuck if the writers on strike wrote insane amounts of horrendously smutty omegaverse fan fiction so when the studios try to AI scrape they'll be fucked over into next year

[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.

[bridoesotherjunk]

To any and all fanfic writers

If I see that your fic was written by Ai

I am 100% not reading your fic

Sorry, not sorry.

[aldruiel-scribbles]

This morning I was reading a fanfic (ao3) and everything was fine until in the comment section the author answered a question about the writing AI she was using. I felt such visceral disgust at that. I dropped the story like it was acid.

To those that use AI. How dare you? How dare you to have the audacity of using a program that steals people's creativity? How dare you feed it, taking that which was granted with love and passion and then transform it into a soulless program? How dare you bend yourself to these corporations that only seek to exploits us further?

I would 100% prefer to read a fic that has mistakes but that has care into every word and a person behind it with immense love for the fandom, than to read Shakespeare vomited by a code that it was written by a thousand cunts that wank themselves at a picture of Mark Zuckerberg.

If you're doing mental gymnastics to justify art theft and exploitation, then there's no mistake. You are wrong. Nothing will change that.

[luxeavenger]

click your blog name in the upper right-hand corner of the site > my preferences > privacy > hide my work from search engines when possible

then hit update at the bottom of the screen

[frownyalfred]

the fact that omegaverse might be our last defense from AI scraping fic for shitty generated novels is giving me so much life on this delightful monday

❤️ god bless you omegaverse writers ❤️

[lilbeanz]

AI is on Ao3 now??? 😭💀

This wasn't even a response to anyone or anything it was just random djjslsldkald

[faeriekit]

It always baffles me when people are so mad about how ao3 operates as an archive and not, like, as an algorithmically driven recommendation machine or as a moral measure of appropriate writing or as a social media site or as anything else people want it to be... It's an archive. It hosts text. That's the sole summary of its job. If you don't like it, you don't...have to use it?

If you want a stricter hosting site for fanfic, ffn exists. If you want something that has an algorithm, pick any social media site nowadays...even tumblr recommends stuff to you now. Ao3 is not going to be your arbiter of fandom discourse nor will it enforce your personal opinion on certain topics because that's a really weird thing to ask of an archive and its staff, and that's straight up not what the site is for. That's like walking into a library and asking snidely why the librarians aren't stopping you from reading the books there. If it makes you mad, there are other fanfic hosting sites that aren't archival-model-based.

[sagegarnish]

AO3 now has a tag for AI works!!! That means you can filter it out!* To filter it from your account, and never see any of it again, follow these steps.

- First, log in to your AO3 account

- Click on this link or paste this in your browser bar

https://archiveofourown.org/skins/new?skin_type=Skin

- Set "Type" to "Site Skin"

- Set "Title" to whatever you want (Something like “No AI” so you'll know what Skin you just made)

- Then click into the large "CSS" box and paste all of the bolded text below - hit the "Submit" button

.blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/Created%20Using%20Generative%20AI/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI-Generated%20Text/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI%20Generated%20Text/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI%20Generated%20Fic/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI-Generated%20Images/works" i]) { display: none !important; }

- Hit "Use"

Presto!

No more AI fics or art in your results! (assuming everyone tagged properly and your browser has the flags enabled)

A blocklist to be used with the Permablocking Specific Tags - Site Skin tutorial by Eli0t

*browser dependent