The Recent AO3 AI Scraping Incident Is Killing My Motivation To Keep Writing.

The recent AO3 AI scraping incident is killing my motivation to keep writing.

I have recently checked to see if my one (1) fic that I’ve posted on ao3 is indeed in the database. And it is.

I literally feel so shit rn. I felt like that ever since I’ve found out about the scraping.

I’m in college rn and my exams will start soon, so I should probably be preparing for them and not care too much about anything else, but I can’t.

There are only the first three chapters of my fic in that database - the latest one was uploaded a week ago or so and at that point, I’ve locked my fic. But I still feel so fucking nauseous that MY WORK is used to train a fucking GenAi model - a thing that I’ve been against for a long time. I’ve yet to write that asshole (which I won’t even bother to name) on huggingface a doi to remove my fic from the database (I still need to create an account on there).

When I saw that the fic is indeed in that database, I genuinely wanted to scream, cry, throw up, anything. I did not consent to this - I dare to say that the vast majority of ao3 authors didn’t.

I highly doubt that the scraper in question is reading this, but if they actually do, then I just want to tell them this:

Go fuck yourself. You are a fucking thief who stole other people’s work and is now using it for AI without the creators’s consent. You are nothing but a filthy parasite who is invading one of the very last places on the internet that hasn’t been corrupted with ads and aggressive capitalist tactics and is putting people there through misery. You are not a 'noble archivist' who is saving something that might become lost media in the future. Like I said, you are a parasite who is preying on actual creative people’s happiness and uses their work for something so pathetic, disgusting and shitty like training a GenAI model.

And to whoever defends this piece of shit or even tries to do the same things they did, go fuck yourself as well. Seriously.

Ever since I found out that someone did this to my work - my work that I’ve put my heart and soul into, I’ve felt hopeless. I’ve decided to take a break from writing so I could focus on my exams…but I still feel depressed because of it. Writing has been my passion ever since childhood, and now, that I’ve finally decided to post something of my own on the internet, it’s being stolen and used without my consent in such a disgusting way.

Like I already mentioned, I locked my fic. It will no longer be available to guest users because I want to have atleast some form of slight 'protection' against similar incidents in the future. But I also know that there have been those that had their fics appear in that database despite the fact that they were locked.

In which case I have to ask: WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE, AS FANFIC WRITERS (and artists in general) SUPPOSED TO DO TO PROTECT OUR WORKS AGAINST SHIT LIKE THIS???

As if I didn’t make it clear enough already, I never consented to my work being used to train AI and I never will. I hate generative AI with every fiber of my being and I sincerely wish that every such program would be completely destroyed and deleted from existence. If someone ever uses my work to train AI, than I want them to know that I fucking hate them and they should go fuck themselves.

AI """art""" is not art and it never will. It is nothing but a gross, pathetic form of theft.