For the past 17 years, writers around the world have used Archive of our Own to post and share stories about their favorite characters. We have been inspired by one another, support one another, and shared each other's works to build communities. Fanfiction as a whole has been elevated to a level of respect that the original actors and creators from our fandoms adore us, and want us to continue our passion for fandom.

But with the creation of generative AI companies and their selfish need to make art free, cut out the human element of creation, they now turn to our fandom spaces to 'train' their programs. And they do not discriminate, they are scraping everything they can if the story is not restricted to users only. With the latest mass-stealing, they used urls that ended between the numbers 1 and 63,000,000.

We do not consent to having our work stolen as the price for posting our content online. We don't make money off of what we create, and many authors end up turning their stories into published novels. These companies take that chance away from us by stealing what we wrote when it's in the fanfiction stage.

By signing this petition, we want ao3 and the OTW to take the AI theft seriously and hire coders to build fail-safes into the site's code. We want our work to be as protected as possible, and we don't want to stop sharing our art online.

We are not fodder for AI companies, we are human beings who want a space that will not be taken over by AI.