AO3 Clone That Sold AI Audiobooks of Fan Fiction Shuts Down After Author Takedowns

A copycat site that scraped fan fiction from Archive of Our Own and sold AI-narrated audiobooks of it has gone offline after about a day, following what its creator described as more than 2,000 takedown requests from writers. 404 Media reported that the site, ao3.life, went down on Monday evening, November 2, after a wave of anger from readers and authors.

The site appeared while AO3 itself is dark. The archive went down on October 29 after what the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs it, called a security incident, and the OTW has said the outage could last up to four weeks. Its status page still listed the incident as unresolved on Tuesday morning. PT covered the outage when it began.

What the clone offered

According to 404 Media, ao3.life let visitors search fandoms and tropes, read stories in the browser or download them as EPUB files, and listen to AI-generated audio versions, which cost money after the first three minutes. A page on the site claimed authors would get 91% of the audiobook profits, with the other 9% kept for "narration and processing" costs.

The works were not uploaded by their authors. The site's creator, who signed as Ganesh, wrote that "a swarm of AI Agents controlling 40 virtual machines were scraping the internet for all drives, scrapes, and sources," 404 Media reported. Since the outage began, 404 Media noted, people have also been passing around drive links to stories they downloaded earlier, often without being the authors.

AO3 lets writers "archive lock" a story so only logged-in members can see it, which is meant to keep scrapers out. That didn't help much here. One author told Bluesky followers, in a post quoted by 404 Media, "I had everything archive locked on ao3 and it's still all here and I as the author have 0 control over any of my fics on there." And to get a story removed, ao3.life asked writers to prove ownership by leaving a note on their AO3 profile, which no one could do with AO3 offline.

Down within a day

Writers used the site's takedown address anyway, and in large numbers. In a statement on the site, quoted by 404 Media, the creator wrote: "It was never my intention to hurt so many authors - and I'm truly sorry to you all." The creator said ao3.life drew 126,592 unique users in its first 24 hours, and that the audio fee was meant to cover server costs. "I sold like 11 audiobooks, if it's any consolation," the note went on. It was signed by "a 17 year old from India that thought they were doing something good."

Why it matters to writers

Fan fiction has been a target for scraping and resale for a while. 404 Media has reported on Etsy sellers who print and bind free fan fiction and list the books for as much as $100. AO3 itself bans its writers from charging for their work, and many fan writers are wary of anyone else making money from it.

So an outage has become a rights mess. While the archive is down, writers can't lock, edit or pull their stories, and older copies keep getting passed around. Anyone who writes fan fiction and original work too would do well to keep their own files and watch where their stories show up, at least until AO3 returns and they can change their settings.

AO3 hosts nearly 18.5 million works, according to 404 Media. The OTW has said no works were lost in the incident.