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Fanfiction Exchanges
Oct. 13th, 2026 08:00 amThere is the growing problem, within fanfiction-land, of AI. Now, AO3 doesn't ban AI fic for the same reason as they don't ban anything else-- they're not about banning. The people who run AO3 are aware you can't avoid things that are banned, because it won't stop people doing them but it will stop them tagging for it. AO3 says "it's not banned but we have this lovely tag; please tag for it." And people are actively using that tag, which means other people can exclude that tag on their searches.
But exchanges do ban AI. They kind of have to; no one wants to put a ton of work into writing a gift and get back a terrible AI-written one--not that you don't get terrible gifts in entirely human-written exchanges, you absolutely do, but AI makes things considerably easier for bad-faith actors, and will probably result in more bad-faith actors participating because without AI they'd need to put in at least some effort or become known as a serial defaulter. (Which *does* get you banned from everything except Bulletproof, and it also results in no one wanting to write for you which means all you get is obligationfic which probably isn't putting a ton of effort into things.) The problem then becomes how you identify AI fic.
Which people are very convinced they're good at.
I am skeptical.
People are also convinced that Pangram is somehow better than all the other AI detectors, which... five minutes on Reddit will find you people totally unconnected to fandom, people who are trying to deal with academic honor code violations, discussing the inconsistencies they've found in Pangram's detection. It has an excellent marketing campaign but every AI detector is BS. Quite aside from the fact that it is AI itself, so it's got all the horrible ethical consequences of AI use.
The thing is, the gotcha the people in favor of these policies keep flinging around is "well there haven't been any false accusations yet" and I'm just like "absent admissions from the writers or actual AI artifacts like watermarks and failure to remove the prompts, how do you know that?" When I raise this, I get asked which AI user I'm shilling for. Which... I'm not. I'm quite deliberately not on Exchanges After Dark because it's filled with people who stir up drama. (She says, fully admitting she hangs out on FFA.) I have no idea who any of the recent people who've been accused of AI are. My point is that it's unfalsifiable--even raising the question of potential false accusations leads to "you're a shill." There's no allowance even for the possibility. Or when there is allowance, it's "well anyone writing in any computer program today can show a version history, and that proves you actually worked on it, ergo being concerned about this means you are a shill!"
Which is fascinating to me, because there are a lot of base assumptions in there. My reaction to "anyone can show a version history" was "Who has version history for their fanfiction?" I type it in a LibreOffice document, sometimes do minimal edits, and post it as soon as I'm done writing it. (Profic gets revised a bit more before I start showing it to people, but even there I don't start saving version history until someone who's paying me starts sending me line edits.)
(Seriously, these people aren't even reliable in their accusations for things with no ambiguity attached; someone on Coaltide has accused me of nominating my "Willow fanfic" recursively last year, which I just... I haven't written anything about any characters named Willow? Or any fandoms with Willow in the title? Or ever tried to nominate my own fic recursively? And you're expecting me to trust your ability to tell if something is AI when you can't tell that I don't share a username with the person who actually did that?)
I'm saying that from my observations of how fandom behaves, this will happen at some point. When we get the next Winterfox, if nothing else. And at that point, you're going to need a way of dealing with this that is neither "snake oil AI detector" nor "vibes," and denying that it's going to happen does nothing except ensure it will.
...and writing all that did nothing to help with the "should I participate in Yuletide even with the possibility of my stuff getting run through Pangram hanging over my head" problem. (I'm not actually concerned about people genuinely mistaking my fic for AI. I have a history that predates AI being a major problem and a lot of writer tics. But people accusing me of AI for all the same reasons the internet will come after me for existing if I gain any kind of name recognition? Oh, yes, that concerns me.)
But exchanges do ban AI. They kind of have to; no one wants to put a ton of work into writing a gift and get back a terrible AI-written one--not that you don't get terrible gifts in entirely human-written exchanges, you absolutely do, but AI makes things considerably easier for bad-faith actors, and will probably result in more bad-faith actors participating because without AI they'd need to put in at least some effort or become known as a serial defaulter. (Which *does* get you banned from everything except Bulletproof, and it also results in no one wanting to write for you which means all you get is obligationfic which probably isn't putting a ton of effort into things.) The problem then becomes how you identify AI fic.
Which people are very convinced they're good at.
I am skeptical.
People are also convinced that Pangram is somehow better than all the other AI detectors, which... five minutes on Reddit will find you people totally unconnected to fandom, people who are trying to deal with academic honor code violations, discussing the inconsistencies they've found in Pangram's detection. It has an excellent marketing campaign but every AI detector is BS. Quite aside from the fact that it is AI itself, so it's got all the horrible ethical consequences of AI use.
The thing is, the gotcha the people in favor of these policies keep flinging around is "well there haven't been any false accusations yet" and I'm just like "absent admissions from the writers or actual AI artifacts like watermarks and failure to remove the prompts, how do you know that?" When I raise this, I get asked which AI user I'm shilling for. Which... I'm not. I'm quite deliberately not on Exchanges After Dark because it's filled with people who stir up drama. (She says, fully admitting she hangs out on FFA.) I have no idea who any of the recent people who've been accused of AI are. My point is that it's unfalsifiable--even raising the question of potential false accusations leads to "you're a shill." There's no allowance even for the possibility. Or when there is allowance, it's "well anyone writing in any computer program today can show a version history, and that proves you actually worked on it, ergo being concerned about this means you are a shill!"
Which is fascinating to me, because there are a lot of base assumptions in there. My reaction to "anyone can show a version history" was "Who has version history for their fanfiction?" I type it in a LibreOffice document, sometimes do minimal edits, and post it as soon as I'm done writing it. (Profic gets revised a bit more before I start showing it to people, but even there I don't start saving version history until someone who's paying me starts sending me line edits.)
(Seriously, these people aren't even reliable in their accusations for things with no ambiguity attached; someone on Coaltide has accused me of nominating my "Willow fanfic" recursively last year, which I just... I haven't written anything about any characters named Willow? Or any fandoms with Willow in the title? Or ever tried to nominate my own fic recursively? And you're expecting me to trust your ability to tell if something is AI when you can't tell that I don't share a username with the person who actually did that?)
I'm saying that from my observations of how fandom behaves, this will happen at some point. When we get the next Winterfox, if nothing else. And at that point, you're going to need a way of dealing with this that is neither "snake oil AI detector" nor "vibes," and denying that it's going to happen does nothing except ensure it will.
...and writing all that did nothing to help with the "should I participate in Yuletide even with the possibility of my stuff getting run through Pangram hanging over my head" problem. (I'm not actually concerned about people genuinely mistaking my fic for AI. I have a history that predates AI being a major problem and a lot of writer tics. But people accusing me of AI for all the same reasons the internet will come after me for existing if I gain any kind of name recognition? Oh, yes, that concerns me.)
