Flames, on the sides of my face

[soc_puppet]

I resisted the last time news of AO3 having been scraped by LLM ("AI") bots got around, since I figured at that time the damage was already done, but with this? Yeah, my fics are now locked. (With only one exception, though if any of my collaborators from Pod Together unlock any of our works, I will not contest that.)

Long story short: Someone has made an "Audible for AO3" app that uses AI voices to read fics aloud. A screencap in the first link suggests that archive-locked works won't be touched, which is. Something.

You know I'm 100% about accessibility. But screenreaders exist, and so do podficcers, and the comparison between this app and Spotify? Does not in any way make me think it will have a positive impact for writers or podficcers.

Edit: The app in question is currently suspended. I have not yet re-unlocked the majority of my fics because I am (justifiably, IMO) cynical about this shit, as are most of the Reddit commenters there. I'll update again if warranted.

Comments

[chanter1944]

Thanks for the tip; I've now gone and archive-locked many of my fics. No, creepy scrapers of 'we will snarf your writing and then allow our machines to regurgitate it in the guise of originality which is really just theft', you cannot have my Émilie and Duusu stories, or my Star Trek stories, or that treasured Babylon 5 fic, or...

I have not yet archive-locked anything that's been gifted to someone as part of an exchange. I hesitate to do that, as I'm not sure of the etiquette surrounding locking fics written for exchanges in general. Any ideas?

[soc_puppet]

Yeah, I'm really hoping that the app in question and anything similar get super-duper killed ASAP, but I'm not holding my breath. Fandom as a whole has held out a looooong time, and I'm reasonably confident that someone in fandom can come up with a defense for us, but still. Why take that chance if I don't have to?

I've left only one fic unlocked, and that was a collaboration with someone else; I even locked down my Pod Together fics, but if my partner(s) for any of those unlock them, I won't relock them unless another big thing happens. If it does, at that point I'll contact them and ask what they'd like to do. As far as gifts, if the recipient has an AO3 account, I'd lock them down as well. (Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure this means I'll have to unlock another fic; I'll do that after I finish this comment.)

On the plus side, this whole debacle seems to have drummed up a bit more interest in creating podfic, so that's something!