April 2023 Newsletter, Volume 177

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2023-05-09 17:00:16 UTC

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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. FANLORE NEWS

Fanlore has been working on making page outlines more accessible and making guidelines and practices more visible to new editors. Accordingly, there is a new Help page, Help:Non-English Language Content, now available on Fanlore. Fans are also welcome to get assistance via the Fanlore Discord server. Fanlore held an editing chat there focused on link archiving on April 29.

II. AT THE AO3

In April, the OTW celebrated the 11 millionth fanwork being posted to AO3! Communications’ social media-only announcement of this milestone spread speedily after it dropped. Thank you to everyone who’s shown AO3 and the OTW your support this month!

Open Doors announced the import of The ARC, an archive of Primeval fanfiction, while Policy & Abuse received a little less than 2,000 tickets and Support received about 1,600 tickets in April. Meanwhile, in March, Tag Wrangling wrangled more than 440,000 tags across more than 57,000 fandoms, more than a thousand tags per active wrangler!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Finance posted the 2023 budget ahead of the April Drive. The Drive was coordinated by Development & Membership with support from Communications and Translation, who translated all Drive posts, including the budget, and related graphics into 32 languages. Thanks to the generosity of 7852 people from 71 countries, 6450 of whom chose to begin or renew an OTW membership, the OTW raised a total of US$252,343.98!

Elections was busy in April preparing for the 2023 Board of Directors election. The Election Timelineis now available on Elections’ website. Stay posted for more information in the coming months!

In April, Legal Chair Betsy Rosenblatt participated in the first of the U.S. Copyright Office listening sessions on artificial intelligence and copyright law. This listening session was a great opportunity to provide information, help frame U.S. lawmakers’ questions about future policy decisions, and learn about technology and practice so that the OTW can make its own policy decisions about how to approach questions about AI. Legal will be doing more in this area in the coming months.

The Board of Directors published the minutes for its latest meeting on March 27. They can be accessed on the Minutes page on the OTW website.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 25 March to 24 April, Volunteers & Recruiting received 109 new requests, and completed 103, leaving us with 57 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 April 2023, the OTW has 882 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Kate G, Miki Mizuami, Mo & 2 other Editors
New Communications Volunteers: Szabo Dorottya (Fanhackers Lead) & 3 Fanhackers Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: Charlie167, Phia, Teo and 6 other Import Assistants
New Translation Volunteers: Irina Gostraya (News Translator)
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Amy2 (Projects Volunteer)

Departing Communications Volunteers: Szabo Dorottya (Fanhackers Volunteer role only)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Administrative Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Rosa V, Sarah Fox, Satie, Sunshijne, Fynn, EJ Bell, nolightss, and 23 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ana Gomes, Cinna_moon, Demeter, Harold Liu & 6 other Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Copyeditor, 1 Symposium Editor
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Amy2 (Volunteer role only), Georgia (Volunteer)

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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alexseymer Fri 12 May 2023 04:09PM UTC

Could we have clarification on the AI situation? I do not believe that AI should be allowed on here. This is where thousands of us share our work and to allow AI to scrape data would be a betrayal of trust and I would fully support all the writers and artists if they deleted their work to stop this

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astridshepard Fri 12 May 2023 04:23PM UTC

time to ask rosenblatt to step down if that's the stance on ai the ot3 legal chair is taking. completely out of touch with the userbase they are purporting to represent. yikes.

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PorlPoint Fri 12 May 2023 04:38PM UTC

I find the statements made about AI learning very disturbing, as I do NOT want my creative output (even non copyrighted creative output) to be used to create profit for someone else. I am also ethically against what AI is currently becoming, so if Ao3 is going to let companies use my work to train their AI programs I will leave Ao3.

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MagicalSpaceDragon Fri 12 May 2023 04:50PM UTC

What the fuck, Legal? You're supposed to protect us.

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Julius_Writes_Alot Fri 12 May 2023 04:58PM UTC

Genuinely going to delete my fics if they're going to allow AI shit here, I refuse to go with this, and I will leave AO3 if this ends up being the case

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AshToSilver Fri 12 May 2023 05:08PM UTC

I read the interview and I am honestly a little concerned that someone with these views is holding such a public position in the legal department of AO3 and OTW. I can appreciate that Betsy wants to see AI trained on more inclusive, modern content, but doing so at the expense of creatives who did not consent to have their labour used like this, for the profit and gain of companies building inherently exploitative tech and just barely skirting the edges of copyright infringement is deplorable.
Furthermore - this is INCREDIBLY insensitive an opinion to be highlighting right now. AI writing is one of the main discussion points in the Writers' Strike happening right now in Hollywood. There have been incidents of people committing suicide because AI apps talked them into it. Moderation teams in overseas countries are trying to unionize right now because they get paid crap to cut out the content companies don't want their AIs trained on - but that content is overwhelmingly the vilest parts of the internet, and those moderators are developing PTSD from having to look at videos, images and articles of horrific crimes and opinions.
And this is to say absolutely nothing of the fact that although AO3 does not exclusively host written content - as a primarily writing community, we should be standing in solitary with visual artists in both fandom and not, who are being incredibly vocal over the fact that their work is being stolen for AI imagine generators. Encouraging AIs to train on our work only weakens their position.
Quite frankly - I am amazed this was allowed to go this far. This is not at all what AO3 stands for, and ya'll should be ashamed of yourselves for promoting it.

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1. AshToSilver Fri 12 May 2023 05:19PM UTC
  
  Also; https://chng.it/xZBmCZpQWs - petition calling on AO3 and OTW to act.
  OTW has posted a brief statement on their official website, but there is no clarification and it is not cross posted here. Not a fan of the fact that the LEGAL CHAIR of OTW is being dismissed as 'one of 900+ volunteers'; https://www.transformativeworks.org/update-to-otw-signal-may-2023/
  The interview in question, in case anyone missed it; https://www.arl.org/blog/applying-intellectual-property-law-to-ai-an-interview-with-betsy-rosenblatt/
  
  Last Edited Fri 12 May 2023 05:21PM UTC
  
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Marilianne11 Fri 12 May 2023 05:09PM UTC

I am genuinely considering taking all of my fics off AO3 at the moment if them staying here means that they might get used for machine learning for writing AI. My work is mine, and it is for the enjoyment of readers, not for the growth of AI ór the 'enjoyment' of those who develop them by using my fics. As many others here have said: do not allow AI to scrape our fics. Please.

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1. AngellTheNinth Fri 12 May 2023 05:38PM UTC
  
  They did say that her opinion doesn't reflect theirs but she is still on their Legal board, I would have liked a better statement from them - https://www.transformativeworks.org/update-to-otw-signal-may-2023/
  
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2. 1. verywhale Fri 12 May 2023 05:51PM UTC
    
    Such a non-apology on their part. A lead of their legal committee who spoke to the US government about AI as an OTW representative clearly is more than just "one of our 900+ volunteers". They didn't even mention in this post that it was about AI, just "the issue". I'll wait to see this addressed more seriously.
    
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  2. 1. AngellTheNinth Fri 12 May 2023 05:54PM UTC
      
      Yeah they need to make it clear and I'm glad that people are still pressing them for a more official statement
      
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planetaryweirdo Fri 12 May 2023 05:20PM UTC

I couldn't agree more with what other people are saying here.
This stance on AI is appalling, we're doing our writing for free and in our free time. The fact that you'd even consider letting some company profit off of our work makes me feel beyond disgusted. Should you decide to go through with this, I will definitely be moving my works and deleting my account.

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Favre_the_Undead Fri 12 May 2023 05:39PM UTC

Effe off ai.

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ittorou Fri 12 May 2023 06:01PM UTC

Hey can someone explain to me how using robots that were trained using fanworks to create for-profit writing doesn’t go against the token rule of “fanwork is not for profit” because I really would like to know why ao3 reprimands anyone asking for tips but is okay with this library of fanwork being used to train corporate robots that will then turn around and sell stuff generated with our writings for profit. Just would like to know!

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1. AshToSilver Fri 12 May 2023 06:25PM UTC
  
  ☝️
  Honestly this whole thing sounds like a great way to somehow get the Mouse coming down on our heads if they can prove an AI was trained on fanfiction of their IPs.
  
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2. 1. ittorou Fri 12 May 2023 07:13PM UTC
    
    And they’d definitely be able to tell, there’s already dozens of reported incidents of AI outright plagiarizing word-for-word entire paragraphs of other’s works. If ao3 puts their support behind the robots instead of the fans it will turn nasty for them as an organization.
    
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  2. 1. AshToSilver Sat 13 May 2023 01:08AM UTC
      
      Oh, yeah, I would not be surprised if it would be incredibly easy to spot. Heck - take fanon alone. Most fandoms have some concepts, words or names that aren't canon at all, but get carried over from fic to fic; theoretically, you could probably trace an AI's sources right back to the authors that use it if it spat that sort of thing out.
      I mean - Star Wars alone. A huge chunk of fic have been known to use completely made-up words that were never used in canon, but have been accepted in fanon. They probably don't exist anywhere else except in fanworks, and an AI wouldn't know to cut that out. Stuff like that is practically a digital fingerprint - a good legal team could probably track narrow the sources down exact authors in a matter of days.
      
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cloudygremlin Fri 12 May 2023 06:11PM UTC

Petition for clearer commentary on the AI matter https://chng.it/xwPbB9XTW9

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MadameRay Fri 12 May 2023 06:48PM UTC

Yeahhhh, no. You're going to have to take the concerns raised here very seriously, and be transparent about your stance on the matter of AI, because this is worrying. You ask the users of this site not to monetize their work in exchange for legal protection, and yet here is Legal, apparently throwing support behind the nonconsenual AI scraping of said users free labour - which can and WILL be monetized. It's exploitation and plagarism on a mass scale. That's all AI/ML amounts to. There is no place for it on AO3, which claims to act in the interest of protecting and supporting fandom - or at least, I hope there isn't.
Please do not betray the goodwill you have built up because people are not kidding when they say they'll leave in droves over this. :(

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EvelynRaith Fri 12 May 2023 06:52PM UTC

Allowing AI scraping?? This is highly unethical and extremely disappointing. People are already packing up their fics and preparing to move them off the site due to the blazé attitude of LEGAL regarding AI.
We aren't allowed to ask for a single penny for our works here, but you will consider allowing AI to scrape all our hard work so it can churn out godawful books from the information it STEALS from these creators??
If this is allowed, the exodus will be of epic proportions.

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ableedingpen Fri 12 May 2023 06:57PM UTC

Concurred.
I dont consent to allowing AI to scrape through my words, rinse off any actual meaning and soul that I struggled to put in there, then regurgitate it as some placid, 2D, nightmare blended with the chewed-up-spat-out tasteless leftovers of someone else's labour of love like a repulsive patchwork Eraserhead baby.
Ai's can't write, they just run calculations and vomit back data. It's not fiction, it's maths, and not even the beautiful kind of math that helps us understand the universe.
This is to fiction what marketing numbers and consumer habit data is to the golden ratio and pi.
Nauseating, soulless, I can't escape advertising anywhere else in my life online but here. There's few places on the net left where there isn't one rich white guy, or a bunch of them, looking to get richer.
Taking our work, our organic, thoughtful, impulsive, emotional writing and trying to feed it into a Zuckerberg-Musk-esque machine is gross.
AIs trained to write on fic aren't going to produce anything real. This would just be contributing to a world where you already can't tell a faked image from a real one. This is 9-fingered AI art based on someone else's stolen hardworking, this is DeepFake porn of real people, this is Streaming services thinking they can cancel media 2 seasons in to avoid paying writers residuals, and in the end its still just going to be taking from us for the benefit of some lazy entitled old white guy.
We are an archive, not a databank.

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IonaWestray Fri 12 May 2023 08:15PM UTC

Writing takes time, effort, and heart to produce, and I won't stand to let my craft be scraped by a soulless bot. If AO3 allows AI scraping, I will take my works elsewhere.

Last Edited Fri 12 May 2023 08:15PM UTC

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FirestormCabbit Fri 12 May 2023 08:30PM UTC

So when can we blacklist tags site wide?

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LoxoscelesLolotte Fri 12 May 2023 08:59PM UTC

Y'all in the comments need to stop freaking out about AI. You're starting a moral panic that is going to cause more harm than good.
OTW is a non-profit. They are not selling our data (but there are other fanfic sites that do)
Even if AO3 blanket banned AI-generated content, how could you possibly hope for an already overtaxed volunteer team to handle an influx of reports? Especially since tools to detect such content are unreliable and y'all know damn well trolls and antis would falsely report fics as being AI-generated.

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1. Syluna Fri 12 May 2023 09:44PM UTC
  
  It's not necessarily about OTW making a profit on top of our work, but how badly this goes against the archive's goal of protecting and creating a safe space for transformative writing. Having a Legal Chair who supports training AI with fics without their authors' consent and calling it transformative copying contradicts the essence of AO3. No one consented to this, and the Legal Chair is enthusiastically talking about theft like it's nothing. Of course people are upset, this is not an issue to be glossed over.
  Part of this mess is caused by OTW's slow response. If they were more transparent about this, people wouldn't be as desperate as they are now, because even just a few words from them could bring some reassurance, but the best we got for now is how they said Rosenblatt, the Legal Chair, is only one of their volunteers and their opinion doesn't reflect theirs. They still won't clarify what their opinion happens to be, and this is what's so unsettling about this scenario. This ambiguity coming from OTW is responsible for this outcome, and you shouldn't expect people to be fine with it.
  Banning it sounds unlikely, yes. The way to go is probably something along the lines of making it a choice for authors to accept or deny having their work used to train AI, and to make AI-generated content a warning so people can avoid it if so they wish.
  
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2. 1. vanyamire Fri 12 May 2023 11:04PM UTC
    
    I'd go further and say AO3 does need to go ahead and add a TOS that states they do not consider AI generated output as transformative or fair use.
    Will such works still slip by? Yes. But the more important part is that AO3's legal advocacy do not include AI outputs as being fair use or fanwork when speaking to government offices, because ethical issues aside,
    1- this is an archive to protect fanworks and the people who create them and not spam and
    2-AI goes entirely against AO3's policy that only non commercial fanworks are protected by fair use. AI models are hardly non commercial and being that they compete against the original authors of text (or soon will anyway), this could get very legally murky in the future.
    Anyway, AI is also very ethically unsound and going to be incredibly harmful to millions of livelihoods. I feel Ao3 should get ahead and categorise it as spam and ban it.
    
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  2. 1. Syluna Sat 13 May 2023 12:15AM UTC
      
      This would be the best outcome. Thank you for elaborating on it, really. I focused too much on how people aren't unreasonably making a fuss out of this and forgot about furthering on what would be more appropriate, but it's exactly as you put it: this whole situation has many layers to it, because it's not all about money and data. It's also about not staying true to the archive's purpose.
      
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    2. 1. vanyamire Sat 13 May 2023 11:02AM UTC
        
        No problem :)
        
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  3. LoxoscelesLolotte Fri 12 May 2023 11:25PM UTC
    
    At no point in the interview did Rosenblatt say anything about supporting AI-generated content.
    OTW is not endorsing AI.
    AO3 already blocks Common Crawl. That stops a lot of bots. There's really not much else they can do. There is currently no easy way to tell a scraper from a particularly enthusiastic fan that's backing everything up.
    Throwing around accusations that OTW wants to sell our data to the scrapers and that they endorse AI-generated content and saying Rosenblatt said a lot of things that she didn't is absolutely fomenting a moral panic.
    
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  4. 1. Syluna Fri 12 May 2023 11:54PM UTC
      
      It is, indeed, early to say OTW shares their opinion. However, this is their Legal Chair giving a whole interview about how positive their impression of AI is, not some small member of their group of volunteers giving their opinion online. Even if they're one member, their words hold a lot of weight to them. The longer the OTW takes to clarify this issue, the harder it is to control the situation, so people can't really be blamed for reacting to their lack of resolve. This is not something which happened just the other day, it's been months, and people are genuinely concerned about the site's future.
      
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3. Aevas Fri 12 May 2023 10:54PM UTC
  
  There should be concern because Rosenblatt spoke to the US Copyright Office as a representative of OTW. She described fandom as being overly emotional regarding the issue of fanworks being used for datasets, demonstrating clear paternalism towards the people who her organization is supposed to work with and for. OTW isn't selling our data, but they're doing a god awful job of protecting fanworks from AI datasets and commercial exploitation, and at least one major figure in the organization is using fandom as a way to push for any legal recognition of AI 'creative' works.
  I'm not interested in having my work used to put professional writers out of work, nor am I interested in enriching corporations (even as part of a 'challenge', as the initial news brief said). I am also protective of the over one million words I've written across several accounts on this site, much of it personal and meant for a specific community. As such, I'm not impressed or enthused about how OTW has treated the issue. If OTW is still unable to figure out what its message regarding AI is going to be, that is deeply concerning as it has known about this issue since at least January, when news hit that fanfic was appearing in AI writing programs' results. But whatever its answer, OTW needs to clarify its position, and those asking for that clarification are not in a 'moral panic' but instead rightfully concerned about the safety of their work, the health of their community, and the integrity of an organization that claims to represent us.
  
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4. 1. MalcontentCatboy Sat 13 May 2023 10:18AM UTC
    
    More likely, she simply realizes any law that would outlaw AI training would also outlaw fan content.
    
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  2. 1. vanyamire Sat 13 May 2023 01:46PM UTC
      
      It won't because uh, newsflash, humans and machines are completely different things, and it's possible to regulate an unethical regurgitation machine without banning all fan content :)
      
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    2. Aevas Sat 13 May 2023 06:27PM UTC
      
      I'm absolutely baffled by this argument. The two biggest and most key differences are the human aspect (which has been noted previously as an important difference in copyright rulings on other topics) as well as the aspect of commercialization. AI training isn't being done for fun. It's being done to create a commercial product. I would also argue that by its nature of being non-human, it cannot be transformative.
      And fanfic has always been in a grey area, btw. OTW has done well in advocating for fanworks and the social climate has allowed for more approval of fanworks, but we shouldn't hold any illusions that if IP holders like Disney took issue with fanworks a place like AO3 would survive. If badly written laws regarding AI inadvertently makes fanfic illegal, we exist at the whims of IP holders. If the laws are written well, we remain at the whims of IP holders. But assuming that the laws will be badly written to the point of accidentally outlawing fanfic--ignoring the ramifications that would have on the companies advocating for stricter copyright law as well--is a defeatist position that's more scaremongering than anything else.
      
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    3. 1. MalcontentCatboy Sat 13 May 2023 08:08PM UTC
        
        I think it is truly foolish to believe that laws will be written in such a way as to carve out a little niche for the thing you like while targeting the thing you dislike. The way copyright laws currently exist should be your hint as to the form they will continue to take.
        
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      2. Aevas Sat 13 May 2023 09:07PM UTC
        
        You ignored the rest of the comment where I point out that even if AI/LLM legislation and court rulings are garbage for fanfic, the result is no different for fanfic's position. We can all pretend that fanfic being transformative is a magical talisman against legal problems in the US, but the reality is that if Disney and co wanted fanfic gone, they could absolutely accomplish it. They haven't chosen to so far, and one of the biggest ways that could change is if we continue to be training grounds for AI/LLMs.
        As well, you make a pretty large assumption regarding how corporations will want these laws formed, how negotiations between these companies will proceed, and what will result. The political process belongs to corporations, but as it stands, these corporations are not in agreement about AI's future, not even within industries. Copyright in the US is harsh, but we don't know what exceptions, caveats, or blindspots might come out of this struggle.
        This ignores, of course, any sort of responsibility fandom and OTW hold towards creatives. Our works form a great deal of creative writing AIs' datasets, and we are being used for intensifying economic exploitation. I can't speak for other writers, but I will say that I am not interested in protecting the dubious notion that fanfic can ever be legally 'safe' at the expense of workers.
        
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5. LaikaFlash Sat 13 May 2023 02:22AM UTC
  
  Especially since tools to detect such content are unreliable and y'all know damn well trolls and antis would falsely report fics as being AI-generated.
  ^ This. As much as I hate the AI craze, I think the internet is too inundated with AI-"generated" stuff for any team to hold it back. I don't like the legal chair's enthusiasm toward it, but I'm just waiting to see what OTW policy ends up being. A full-on ban doesn't seem practical in the long run.
  
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6. cloudygremlin Sat 13 May 2023 06:52AM UTC
  
  You clearly have no idea what the AI issue was about, and AI generated fics was not it.
  
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7. 1. LoxoscelesLolotte Sun 14 May 2023 12:07AM UTC
    
    I mean I read the entire interview and am commenting on the straight up panic all over Twitter but go off, I guess
    
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8. MalcontentCatboy Sat 13 May 2023 10:17AM UTC
  
  I fully agree. Most of those leaving comments here are clearly too young to remember the times where essentially all fan content was shut down with legal threats, but are now practically demanding such a draconian view of copyright that many of them may very well end up in court for their own works. Hysteria usually backfires and I see a disaster on the near horizon which will take much longer to undo.
  
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9. 1. vanyamire Sat 13 May 2023 01:44PM UTC
    
    It's not hysteria when it's actually happening.
    
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  2. MalcontentCatboy Sat 13 May 2023 04:49PM UTC
    
    Something AO3 does need to address is people who abuse the block functionality to respond to posts while denying others the ability to respond to their posts. azimuthal, for instance, seems to feel entitled to serial respond to my posts, but blocked me in order to keep me from saying anything in response to those responses. It's simply bad-faith discourse and shouldn't be allowed.
    
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  3. 1. Stealth_Noodle Sat 13 May 2023 07:06PM UTC
      
      "It is impossible to set a legal standard that distinguishes between AI-generated content and human-created fanworks, but a standard should be in place that people have to meet before they are allowed to opt out of further interaction with me" is by far the wildest take that I've seen in this comments section.
      
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    2. 1. MalcontentCatboy Sat 13 May 2023 08:09PM UTC
        
        I just think it's very cowardly to come into a room, shout your opinion at the top of your lungs, then shut the door behind you.
        
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10. Immanuel1971 Sat 13 May 2023 10:51AM UTC
  
  'You're starting a moral panic...' Starting? It is full blown! “The song is sung, the wine is spilled, the wench is pregnant.”
  These threats to leave are also getting really old. If people think they can do better then there is nothing stopping them from starting their own website.
  
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11. 1. MalcontentCatboy Sat 13 May 2023 05:09PM UTC
    
    That isn't enough for them. There are already false accusations flying around on Twitter against OTW leadership that magically appeared over the last few days out of nowhere. It would be funny if this sort of nonsense wasn't so common these days.
    
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  2. LoxoscelesLolotte Sun 14 May 2023 12:08AM UTC
    
    I don't think a lot of these people grok that keeping the definition of Fair Use broad is kinda in our interest as fanfic writers...
    unfortunately the trade-offs kinda suck
    
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HerdOfTurtles Fri 12 May 2023 10:11PM UTC

Fan-fiction is not the appropriate material to take and teach an AI with, I concur with many others.

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BlueOrangeSkins Fri 12 May 2023 11:47PM UTC

The use of AI is heinous and I'm severely disappointed in the fact that AO3, a supposed bastion of creative protection, could allow for AI to scrape author's hard work to produce "writing".
This is not the latest hip thing to do that every other company is doing.
This is not helpful to authors and artists.
This is only helpful to companies themselves to make profit off of.
This is an attack on creativity.

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ranilla_bean Sat 13 May 2023 12:44AM UTC

I’m pretty concerned about the Legal Chair’s comments about AI. Creatives have been expressing a lot of concern about AI scalping for a year and it seems extraordinary to me that they would express enthusiasm for AI scalping fanfiction, which we write out of love and can never profit from. I myself am wrapping up a novel length fic that I’ve spent months labouring on, and the thought of it being used to train AI to take over creative work I love to do is really sickening.
The only response I would expect from your organisation and particularly from the legal dept is a wholehearted refutation of AI and a strong stance on the writers’ side to fight against bots stealing our intellectual property. Could you please clarify your stance on AI?

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