PSA for people who might not know: @glimmerfics is a site that uses AI to produce choose-your-own-adventure fics. an author on the site writes a little bit, and then AI slop fills in the rest. a reader gets some free ‘turns’, and then they have to pay for more. Glimmer profits both off of fanfiction and AI slop.
Glimmer claims to partially ‘offset’ the environmental harm through purchasing carbon offsets. they claim to care about artistry and cite sharing the concern of AI in fandom, but immediately throw it away with some bullshit excuse about only using AI as a ‘tool’, because they ‘don't believe machines can replace human creativity’. they also claim that their goal of butchering man-made art via injecting randomized AI slop into it is because they ‘want to live in a world where more people are making art, not fewer’. sinisterly hollow sentiments, all of it.
i am sick of AI-shills co-opting accessibility arguments to justify causing harm. art is HUMAN MADE. across ages, across abilities, across every single human variable, art can and does persist. this language spits in the face of every disabled artist. every poor person creating in the spaces between. every marginalized person crafting art under oppression. AI does not make art accessible, because it does not make art period.
AI is not a tool, it is a miserable disaster and a despicable weapon. it wreaks havoc on local communities where data centers are built. people dying at rapid rates from cancers and other preventable illnesses directly related to air, water, and land pollution. it is forcing states to go into droughts from stealing all the fresh, drinkable water. it is kicking people out of their careers and preying on vulnerable populations to work for them. it is stealing and scraping people's work, and stealing people's REAL art, including other fanfic authors who do not consent. it is also wildly inaccurate. it also sends people into psychosis and causes them to end their lives.
sites like Glimmer normalize all of that violence, and how they try to wrap it in a velvet bow further normalizes, erases, and justifies it. as an artist who sits at the intersection of many of the identities these AI-proponents claim to be helping, I am appalled. i know many others are too. it's imperative we call out leeches like these in creative spaces.
i don't give a fuck if Glimmer responds and says whatever PR statement they think will be ‘transparent’ and help weasel their way out of real accountability. i don’t care if they say every bit of money goes back into developing the site: any site that uses generative AI in fandom spaces should not exist. especially not with charging users money in direct exchange for fanfiction. it puts the entire fandom community at risk. it mocks and endangers what they insist they care about.
i don't care what reasoning, anecdotes, placation, loopholes, dismissals, or logical fallacies they may employ to rationalize their platform in their potential response to this post. the entire foundation of their business is actively causing harm to the world and the community they claim to love. unless they stop using generative AI entirely (and stop monetizing fanfiction), whatever they say is hollow. these people know they can get away with it, they have users who either don't know the damage AI causes or don't care, and have people singing the praises of the platform. a lot of people applaud bad things. it doesn't make them any less bad.
there are valid ways to create ACTUAL choose your own adventure fics that do not perpetuate violence and oppression (like Twine!). Glimmer can dig their heads in the sand and pretend they're paving a path all they want, but it's a path to hell.
FUCK AI and fuck opportunists. please repost to spread the word, because i've even run across some of these 'fics' and their posts in the wild and been swindled.
