Generative AI Can Fuck Itself
I am one of the AO3 authors (along with all of my friends) who had their work stolen and fed into a dataset to be sold to the highest bidder for training generative AI models.
I feel angry. I feel violated. I feel devastated. I cannot express enough that if you still do not understand the damage that generative AI art and writing has on our planet, our society, and our artists, I don't know what else there is to say. How do you convince a human being to care more about another humankinds ability to create than their personal need to consume?
Generative AI, when it comes to art, has one goal and one goal only. To steal from artists and reduce the dollar value of their work to zero. To create databases of stolen work that can produce work faster and cheaper than the centuries of human creation those databases are built on. If that isn't enough for you to put away Chatgpt, Midgard, ect ect (which, dear god, please let that be enough), please consider taking time to review MIT's research on the environmental impacts of AI here. The UNEP is also gathering data and has predicted that AI infrastructure may soon outpace the water consumption of entire countries like Denmark.
This is all in the name of degrading, devaluing, and erasing artists in a society that perpetually tries to convince us that our work is worth nothing, and that making a living off of our contributions to the world is some unattainable privilege over an inalienable right.
The theft of the work of fic writers is exceptionally insidious because we have no rights. We enter into a contract while writing fic- We do not own the rights to the work. Making money, asking for money, or exchanging any kind of commercial trade with our written fanfiction is highly illegal, completely immoral, and puts the ability to even write and share fanfiction at risk. And still, we write for the community. We pour our hearts out, give up thousands of hours, and passionately dedicate time that we know we will never and can never be paid for, all for the community, the pursuit of storytelling, and human connection.
We now live in a world where the artist creating their work are aware it is illegal for it to be sold, and contribute anyway, only for bots to come in and scrape it so it can be sold to teach AI databases how to reproduce our work.
At this time, I have locked my fics to allow them only to be read by registered users. It's not a perfect solution, but it appears to be the only thing I can do to make even a feeble attempt at protecting my work. I am devastated to do this, as I know many of my readers are guests. But right now it is between that or removing my work and not continuing to post at all. If you don't have an account, you can easily request one here. Please support the writers making these difficult decisions at this time. Many of us are coping with an extreme violation, while wanting to do everything we can to prevent the theft of our work in the future and make life harder for the robots, even if only a little.
Please support human work. Please don't give up on the fight for an artists right to exist and make a living. Please try to fight against the matrix of consumerism and bring humanity, empathy, and the time required to create back into the arts.
To anyone else who had their work stolen, I am so sorry and sending you lots of love. Please show your favorite AO3 authors a little extra support today.
