AI-built AO3 clone that sold fanfic audiobooks goes offline after 2,000 takedown requests

A website that copied Archive of Our Own (AO3) and charged for AI-narrated versions of fan fiction has gone offline after a wave of complaints from authors. The site, ao3.life, went down on the evening of Monday, November 2, after its operator said it had received more than 2,000 takedown requests, 404 Media and Kotaku report.

What the site did

ao3.life launched while AO3 itself was unavailable. The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that runs the archive, says AO3 went down in late October after a security incident and that the outage could last up to four weeks, with no data lost. The clone pitched itself as a way to preserve AO3's content in the meantime.

According to 404 Media, it reposted scraped works as EPUB files for e-readers and sold AI-generated audiobooks of them, with the first three minutes free. It promised authors 91% of the proceeds, keeping 9% for narration and processing, and said it would hold earnings until authors claimed them. Kotaku found that the copy included works that had been deleted or made private, and some authors said stories they had restricted to logged-in AO3 users appeared on it.

In an apology page, the operator, who describes themselves as a teenager, wrote that the site had been assembled by a swarm of AI agents running on 40 virtual machines that gathered existing scrapes and downloads. The note claimed 126,592 unique visitors in 24 hours, said only about 11 audiobooks were sold, described the charges as a way to cover server costs and denied any link to AO3, the OTW or the security incident. None of these claims has been independently verified.

Author backlash

The site's removal process asked authors to prove ownership through their AO3 profiles or linked email addresses, which was impractical while AO3 was down. On social media, some users described the site as a phishing or doxxing attempt, and Kotaku advised readers not to send it emails. The OTW said it knew about the clone and was pursuing its removal, while warning that legal processes take time.

Context

The episode adds to existing tensions between fan writers and AI tools. 404 Media notes that fan fiction is a frequent target of scraping and resale, and that selling it can invite legal challenges even though fan works are often defended as fair use.