Hey, folks. Some of you may have seen me reblogging posts about the suspicion that Sudowrites (an advanced AI generator) may be scraping Archive of Our Own. This was, to be clear, posted on Reddit around 21 hours ago (I’m posting this on December 1st, 2022). Ao3 has been alerted and is looking into it. I’m tagging it “#ao3-sudowrites debacle” if you want to go find those posts.
Because this is very new news, and I’ve not seen a full explanation for the repercussions of this--nor a formal response from Ao3--I’m not making permanent decisions about how to handle this yet. (It may be that locking works does nothing, or that we simply can’t avoid this at all; it may also be that Ao3 can prevent it.) I certainly won’t be deleting works.
However. As a precaution, I will be locking my works to Ao3 users only for now. Once more news comes out and we have a better understanding of what’s happening, I’ll reassess and decide whether to keep them that way. This might be permanent; it might not.
Many of my readers are guests, and I sincerely appreciate every one of you. I’m deeply unhappy about doing this. That said, I seriously value my privacy, and I would prefer to protect my work where possible.
If you would like to make an Ao3 account, you’re going to need an invitation (the reason for that is explained on their FAQ page here). Their FAQ page on invitations and how to get one are here. I highly suggest making an account if you’re a frequent Ao3 reader anyway; outside of letting you post, it also lets you bookmark works and view your history, plus lots of other stuff.
