PSA: AO3 HAS BEEN INFECTED WITH AI BOT COMMENTS.
Have you seen one of these dipshits? If you post regularly on ao3, chances are YES, but more likely you didn't notice nor suspect it was a bot. Sometimes they start off nice, or even praise you before getting nasty out of nowhere, like so:
But much like Grok, their newest obsession is nazism.
I don't know where they come from, or what purpose this could possibly serve other than suicidebaiting random people in the internet, I guess; but apparently they've started parroting names from real users to send these comments and shifting their general length to go by undetected. Maybe those are scrappers trying to train 'reviewbots' to be sold as part of some scam service promising to give feedback for newbie writers, who the fuck knows.
Here are more examples of the tone and backhanded compliments you can find in these:
If you regularly post on AO3 or interact with writers in it, please pass this along so they don't feel insane receiving bombs in their inbox. This is ridiculous.
And this is why we turn off guest comments people. It's only going to get worse from here!
Hey to answer your questions on “why”, depends on the ai comment.
1. If positive: they’re fishing to try to get you to reply and take the discussion off site, where they will try to get you to pay for fanart (that will never happen). Scam for money.
2. If negative: they’re trying to get you to delete or orphan your work so that you have an almost impossible time proving copyright and they have an easier time stealing it for resale elsewhere or putting into an ai’s database uncontested.
Stay safe out there, delete bot comments, and don’t let them try to convince you that you should stop writing.























