Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
SMRTR summary
Twelve-point-six million fanfiction stories, scraped from the internet without permission. That's the latest battle cry in the war between AI developers and passionate fan writers.
In early April, a user named nyuuzyou uploaded this massive dataset to Hugging Face, an AI company, sparking outrage in online fan communities. Fanfiction writers, who craft stories based on beloved characters for free, feel their creative work is being exploited.
"This is something that takes time and effort and your heart and your soul, and you do this in a community," says Nikki, a Star Wars fanfic writer. "And then you're telling me you're just going to poop it out two seconds on a screen."
The fanfic community has been fighting back, filing takedown notices and advocating against AI use in fandom. But it's an uphill battle against tech companies hungry for training data.
For writers like Nikki, this isn't just about copyright - it's about preserving the spirit of fandom. "I did it because I love those characters," she says. "It is a gift."
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to The Verge.
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