AO3 & AI Generated Content

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This article documents a currently unfolding situation within the fannish realm. Content may change quickly, and the page structure itself may undergo major revision. New details are very welcome.

Event
Event: AO3, AI and scraping
Participants:
Date(s): May 2023
Type: AO3 controversy
Fandom: Pan-fandom
URL:
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A controversy related to data scraping and AI-generated content on AO3 erupted in May 2023. It began after a quote from Organization for Transformative Works (OTW)'s Legal Committee Chair, Betsy Rosenblatt, resurfaced in an issue of OTW Signal, an online publication of OTW.[1] The original interview, which was first published back in February, highlighted many current legal issues in the US with AI and machine learning,[2] and Betsy Rosenblatt was clearly expressing a moderate stance on the debate, but outrage was sparkled over a quote in which it was implied she approved of the scraping of fanfics, and thus fanfiction archives, for machine learning purposes.

The scraping of AO3 for training AIs had been a debate in fandom at least since ChatGPT written fanfic became a trend on TikTok, and until this point OTW had been quiet about AI fanfic on the archive. Moreover, the OTW Signal post dropped on the first week of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, in which protection and limitations against AIs were part of the goals, which enraged fandom.

Betsy pointed out that having AIs learn from works such as fanfiction meant that they weren’t only using old works from the public domain to learn about the world. “That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.”

OTW Signal, May 2023 (original version) [1]

OTW published an update and clarified that Rosenblatt's comment doesn't represent the organization.[3] It nevertheless prompted a large amount of criticism, and a Change.org petition.[4]

Timeline of Events

  • November 30, 2022: ChatGPT is launched.
  • December 1: kafetheresu posts Sudowrites scraping and mining AO3 for it's writing AI to the AO3 subreddit, stoking fears that AO3 fanfic has been scraped and used in AI models. Fandom stats fans note that a significant number of AO3 users start archive-locking their fic. [1].
  • December 2: AO3 coders open a ticket to block Common Crawl from scraping the archive.[2]
  • December 23: The block goes live and is noted in the January 2023 release notes on AO3 News.
  • By April 2023 some fans are posting AI-generated fanworks to the archive, and others are complaining about it. See 'For fun' or not, AI fics should be banned from AO3 all together.
  • May 6: An OTW Signal post includes a quote from a February interview with OTW lawyer Betsy Rosenblatt speaking approvingly of AI-generated fanfic. The post on the OTW website gets over 300 comments from irate fans. On Twitter, the tweet about OTW Signal gets over 2000 quote-tweets. "OTW Signal" items are not published in AO3 News, so AO3 users leave their comments about AI on the April 2023 Newsletter instead.
  • May 12: The OTW posts a short apology, noting that "That article featured the opinion of one of our 900+ volunteers. It does not represent an official position on the part of the OTW or its Board of Directors." [3] Fans leave 136 comments on the post, very unimpressed.
  • May 13: The OTW posts a more in-depth followup to its followup, "AI and Data Scraping on the Archive". The post outlines the steps taken so far to prevent data scraping on the archive, states the Legal committee's "position that users should be allowed to opt out from having their works incorporated into AI training sets, a position that they have presented to the U.S. Copyright Office", and notes that AI fanfic is not currently against AO3's terms of service and that it falls within the AO3's goal of maximum inclusiveness of content. The post also states that this policy is currently under discussion internally. The AO3 News post gets 862 comments. The post on the OTW website gets 197 comments. The tumblr post gets over 1500 notes.

Topics

Reactions to Betsy Rosenblatt's comment

Essentially Betsy Rosenblatt agrees with Stability AI that its fair use, and believes that AI is “reading fanfic”.

(snip)

All this to say: Betsy Rosenblatt does not actually understand AI, has presumably fallen for the marketing behind Generative AI, and is not fit to legally fight for fic writers.

volixia669 on Tumblr, May 11th, 2023 [5]

This is a betrayal of Ao3′s mission, a betrayal of the worldwide community of fanfic-writers/readers, and a betrayal of Betsy Rosenblatt’s job to legally protect fanfiction.

silverstark on Tumblr, May 11, 2023

Every fanfic writer & reader should be angry that @ao3org is ok w AI, esp in the middle of a huge writers strike.

Jinath Hyder on Twitter, May 12, 2023

I'm so enraged because AO3 doesn't take a clear stance against AI scraping their users' works without consent.

TheGirlWhoRidesLikeASamurai on Mastodon, May 12, 2023 [6]

Honestly, my big takeaway here is that she doesn’t think AI is going to actually affect fanfic writers or AO3 all that much, so she’s not concerned about that.

(snip)

Granted, it was maybe not the very best quote to include in an OTW post, but OTW being bad at PR means it’s a day ending in y. This all seems like a bit of a tempest in a teapot.

olderthannetfic on Tumblr [7]

Further Reading

References

  1. ^ a b eskici (2023-05-06). "OTW Signal, May 2023". OTW. Archived from the original on 2023-05-06.
  2. ^ Katherine Klosek (2023-02-23). "Applying Intellectual Property Law to AI: An Interview with Betsy Rosenblatt". Association of Research Libraries. Archived from the original on 2023-02-23.
  3. ^ Jess H (2023-05-12). "Update to OTW Signal, May 2023". OTW. Archived from the original on 2023-05-18.
  4. ^ iskendaris kebab (2023-05-11). "Writer' Call for OTW and AO3 Transparency, Clarity, and Stance on A.I." Change.org. Archived from the original on 2023-05-18.
  5. ^ https://volixia669.tumblr.com/post/717086415960276992/otws-legal-chair-is-pro-ai-and-what-that-means
  6. ^ https://mastodon.social/@viktuuri0nIce/110354814983219666
  7. ^ https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/717508954070171648/you-know-what-im-worried-about-otws-legal-chair
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