This tool is optional. No one is required to use it, but it's here if you want to know which of your AO3 fics were scraped. Locked works were not 100% protected from this scrape. Currently, I don't know of any next steps you should be taking, so this is all informational.
Most people should use this link to check if they were included in the March 2025 AO3 scrape. This will show up to 2,000 scraped works for most usernames.
Or you can use this version, which is slower but does a better job if your username is a common word. This version also lets you look up works by work ID number, which is useful if you're looking for an orphaned or anonymous fic.
If you have more than 2,000 published works, first off, I am jealous of your motivation to write that much. But second, that won't display right on the public version of the tools. You can send me an ask (preferred) or DM (if you need to) to have me do a custom search for you if you have more than 2,000 total works under 1 username. If you send an ask off-anon asking me to search a name, I'll assume you want a private answer.
In case this post breaches containment: this is a tool that only has access to the work IDs, titles, author names, chapter counts, and hit counts of the scraped fics for this most recent scrape by nyuuzyou discovered in April 2025. There is no other work data in this tool. This never had the content of your works loaded to it, only info to help you check if your works were scraped. If you need additional metadata, I can search my offline copy for you if you share a work ID number and tell me what data you're looking for. I will never search the full work text for anyone, but I can check things like word counts and tags.
Please come yell if the tool stops working, and I'll fix as fast as I can. It's slow as hell, but it does load eventually. Give it up to 10 minutes, and if it seems down after that, please alert me via ask! Anons are on if you're shy. The link at the top is faster and handles most users well.
On mobile, enable screen rotation and turn your phone sideways. It's a litttttle easier to use like that. It works better if you can use desktop.
Some FAQs below the cut:
First off! If you're seeing an old version of this post, you may not have seen that we now have our first tool to poison AO3 fics! This is still experimental, and it's likely we'll find issues with it as people start using it! But if you want something like Glaze and Nightshade but for fic, this is what we have right now. Before you decide to use it, please read all the info you can--most importantly, using the poison in its current state makes your fic inaccessible to certain users. All the TTS tools I've tried work with this as long as your readers know to save the fic in a certain way! But people who need to download an offline copy to adjust the colors and can't do that with an AO3 site skin will NOT be able to download your work with the current version of the poison. For downloading EPUBs, it preliminarily looks like Calibre can support "unpoisoning" the fic so it's readable again.
"What do I need to do now?": At this time, the main place where this dataset was shared is disabled. As far as I'm aware, you don't need to do anything, but I'll update if I hear otherwise. If you're worried about getting scraped again, locking your fics to users only is NOT a guarantee, but it's a little extra protection. There are methods that can protect you more, but those will come at a cost of hiding your works from more potential readers as well.
"I know AO3 will be scraped again, and I'm willing to put a silly amount of effort into making my fics unusable for AI!": Excellent, stick around here. I'm currently trying to keep up with anyone working on solutions to poison our AO3 fics, and I will be reblogging information about doing this as I come across it.
"I want my fics to be unusable for AI, but I wanna be lazy about it.": You're so real for that, bestie. It may take awhile, but I'm on the lookout for data poisoning methods that require less effort, and I will boost posts regarding that once I find anything reputable.
"I don't want to know!": This tool is 100% optional. If you don't want to know, simply don't click the link. You are totally welcome to block me if it makes you feel more comfortable.
"Can I see the exact content they scraped?": Nope, not through me. I don't have the time to vet every single person to make sure they are who they say they are, and I don't want to risk giving a scraped copy of your fic to anyone else. If you really want to see this, you can find the info out there still and look it up yourself, but I can't be the one to do it for you.
"Are locked fics safe?": Not safe, but so far, it appears that locked fics were scraped less often than public fics. The only fics I haven't seen scraped as of right now are fics in unrevealed collections, which even logged-in users can't view without permission from the owner.
"My work wasn't a fic. It was an image/video/podfic.": You're safe! All the scrape got was stuff like the tags you used and your title and author name. The work content itself is a blank gap based on the samples I've checked.
"It's slow.": Unfortunately, a 13 million row data dashboard is going to be on the slow side. I think I've done everything I can to speed it up, but it may still take up to 10 minutes to load if you use the second link. It's faster if you can use desktop or the first link, but it should work on your phone too.
"My fic isn't there.": The cut-off date is around February 15th, 2025 for oneshots, but chapters posted up to March 21st, 2025 have been found in the data so far. I had to remove a few works from the dataset because the data was all skrungly and breaking my tool. (The few fics I removed were NOT in English.) Otherwise, from what I can tell so far, the scraper's code just... wasn't very good, so most likely, your fic was missed by random chance.
Thanks to everyone who helped with the cost to host the tool! I appreciate you so so so much. As of this edit, I've received more donations than what I paid to make this tool so you do NOT need to keep sending money. (But I super appreciate everyone who did help fund this! I just wanna make sure we all know it's all paid for now, so if you send any more that's just going to my savings to fix the electrical problems with my house. I don't have any more costs to support for this project right now.)
(Made some edits to the post on 27-May-2025 to update information!)
I don't want my works to be on sketchy AI training websites, but I also don't want sketchy AI training websites to have my real human name and contact information, which is generally required for DMCA notices. You see my problem.
PSA: Your AO3 work might have been scraped for a GenAI dataset
(PLEASE NOTE: At this time, access to the dataset has been disabled. You can file a DMCA takedown request if your work is included in the scraped data to campaign for full deletion, but at this time it is considered unnecessary.)
This is intended as a general notification for all the writers following this blog who post on AO3.
Approximately 12.6 million public works were scraped from AO3 and several other published-work sites, including PaperDemon, which has regular updates on the situation as well as resources. Here is the link to their updates.
Affected AO3 users are those whose work IDs were public-facing (that is to say, not locked to registered AO3 users only), and whose work IDs are between 1 and 63,200,000.
Your work ID is the number in your work's site URL, like so:
This work has an ID only in the 61-million range, and so was scraped for the dataset.
If you wish to lock your works to be visible to logged-in users only, you can do so through Works > Edit Works > All > Edit > Only show to registered users.
Thank you to the lovely people that are helping others go through the dataset and figure out if their fics were scraped or not. However, locking our fics now or before hasn't helped;
locked fics were also scraped.
I haven't locked any of my own fics but I have seen others who either had a lot of locked fics or had entirely locked fics on the archive come forward and mention that the dataset also included them.
This means that the scraper had an account.
I'm so sorry for everyone involved (including myself) but at this point locking our fics does nothing if we know they also had an account. It only means that our fics are reaching a smaller audience than before.
To my own audience, my works will still be available to read with or without an account, I'm not going to let them scare me into hiding.
50 of my 52 stories on AO3 were scraped without my permission to be used as a training set for AI.
50
of 52.
Of those were original works, one of which was a character study for my book characters that a follower wanted to read.
I've filed my takedown request, but there is a chance it may not be removed. If it is not removed, I will retire from writing indefinitely, as I do not want this to become the norm and have my writing be fed to AI to create endless slop.
Updated Pin Post - IF YOU'RE HERE ABOUT THE AO3 SCRAPE
Please move over to ao3scrapesearch! (I wanted to have a blog where I could bring in other admins to help out as needed, and my fandom blog ain't it anymore.)
What's Next
You can check out this guide to submitting a DMCA claim on this guy. The main download source of the dataset has been permanently disabled! You shouldn't need to submit DMCA claims as of now, but please be aware that there are other sources out there to download this dataset.
I also temporarily made this blog viewable only in the Tumblr dash just to minimize people from 4chan coming in here. It'll go back to normal eventually.
(You guys are welcome to follow this blog if you want, but I am normally a Klance blog, so you're gonna get the daily Klance spam on your dash from me if you do!)
welp. I just got it confirmed this afternoon that twenty five of my fics got caught up in the last AI scrape on AO3.
I've had my fics locked for over a year now, so. that officially means nothing anymore. these poor excuses for human beings are using accounts in bad faith, or otherwise circumventing not having one's fics public to get at them.
if you're worried about your own work, you can go here and request the nice person digging through the metadata see what turns up when they search your username. if you don't want to make an account on AI Assholes R Us there, you can also message @occasionalklance here on tumblr, who is the person kind enough to do all the data-digging on their off-hours.
all this to say, I am tired, and not inclined to finish or post anything right now or maybe for a while, especially because the assholes over on hugg/ingface are saying they've set a scraper to capture any newly posted work. they might just be talking out of their collective ass to scare people, but I just don't feel like fucking with it.
to all genAI knobgobblers, I wish a very "Explosive Diarrhea Forever" 🖤
