Curate, connect, and discover
as someone who USED to use generative ai (character.ai mostly, nothing correlating with ai "artwork." i have ALWAYS HATED ai-generated images) before the apathy and guilt finally caught up to me, i'm so pissed about the ao3 ai scrape. so many works by so many people were fed into generative ai so that sluggish, worthless, negligent "authors" can make their own fanfiction, stolen from actual talented writers who go to that website.
including mine. my book isn't even a piece of fanfiction — it's poetry. poetry describing my deepest, most hidden feelings to the world, even if but only 5 or so people have ever taken the interest to view it. i just locked my fanfiction to registered accounts only, because i'm scared of something like that happening again.
ai should've only been used as a tool to help, and to assist people in need with only small tweaks. instead, it is being used as a tool to create something out of just a singular prompt. people don't want to believe it, but it IS killing artists' livelihoods, slowly but surely.
and this isn't even JUST about visual art. this is about writing, photography, fashion, music, and so much more. all of the arts are SOMEWHERE at risk, just because people would rather be lazy and eat away at the environment instead of either learn or graciously give a real person a few dollars to do it for them.
yes, i DID use to use generative ai. YES, i feel bad for it. and i feel that i sound like a hypocrite because of that. but at this point, growing out of using it and condemning others that still do is better than continuing to use it despite the very real hardships that artists continue to go through because of it.
to other artists who post on ao3: if your work is between the id numbers 1 and 63,200,000, toggle the setting to make it only viewable for registered users. you can view the id number in the url when you copy and paste it.