Datasets:
curious re: use cases, projects
Came over here from the same thing everyone else did, as one might guess
On one hand, I have to roll my eyes a bit at the smuglord shit, it feels like a bunch of 16-year-olds arguing with each other in here. On the other hand, I'm a copyright abolitionist in any case (being a fanfiction author and advocating for IP law is shooting yourself in the foot), and seeing this described as a "research platform" with largely noncommercial use cases has me intrigued.
What kind of projects are folks actually working on with this set?
I practiced doing t-SNE on text embeddings from the provided data and then plotting those in 2D using PCA for dimensionality reduction. Looks neat. Not exactly useful but it was a fun little thing to kill some time with. I think later I might generate some instructions based on the stories and fine tune an LLM on well-rated fanfics.
ha, looking this up and learning... I'm a public health guy, not an AI/ML guy, so much of this is not immediately understandable to me. but I've worked with a fair few Horrifying Databases of claims data in my life, so dimensionality reduction at least makes sense coming from that context. really seems like a bit of a toy tho... wondering if there are bigger insights re: patterns of fandom writing that could be gleaned here.
idk, my shit will always be free as in libre, but if folks are putatively using words and words of gay sex I've spent hours of my life on, I want to hear about cool use cases. (not, ofc, saying that what you are doing isn't cool! I don't have the context in the field to say whether it is or not. I do want to hear all of it. lol)
"being a fanfiction author and advocating for IP law is shooting yourself in the foot" WHAT DO YOU MEAN????? FANFIC AUTHORS CAN'T MAKE MONEY!!!! THAT HOW WE'RE ABLE TO DO THIS!!!!!!!! THESE ASSHOLES CAN MAKE MONEY!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S PART OF THE ILLEGAL PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't comment on that when you seemingly don't have a good grasp on why this content is legal. Why do you think fanartist can make their art? Why do you think OTW has that abbreviation? It's the Organization for TRANSFORMATIVE Works for a reason.
(Yes I acknowledge that I'm feeding into what's probably at least somewhat rage bait but like don't rob my house then say in your own that it's actually stupid for me to try to get my stuff back)
"being a fanfiction author and advocating for IP law is shooting yourself in the foot" WHAT DO YOU MEAN????? FANFIC AUTHORS CAN'T MAKE MONEY!!!! THAT HOW WE'RE ABLE TO DO THIS!!!!!!!! THESE ASSHOLES CAN MAKE MONEY!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S PART OF THE ILLEGAL PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't comment on that when you seemingly don't have a good grasp on why this content is legal. Why do you think fanartist can make their art? Why do you think OTW has that abbreviation? It's the Organization for TRANSFORMATIVE Works for a reason.
Long post incoming
You clearly don't remember when Anne Rice was throwing lawsuit threats at everything that moved, my child. Fanfiction and fanart exist in an interesting murky area where they could go either way - fair use or not, derivative or transformative work. OTW has, imo, the more compelling argument - that it's fair use and a transformative work - but it can go either way in court based on a number of factors. Same goes for fanart, although most fanartists deliberately flout that lately by taking money for fanart (have you ever wondered why the double standard? it's because of notable authors who were copyright trolls).
Stronger IP law that would protect writers from AI/ML use would kill fanfiction. A lot of folks don't know how AI/ML actually works - they think AO3 has just been fed into a great big skynet, and shreds of our works are popping out to make someone else easy money. But to some published authors, our work looks like taking their work to a shredder and pasting the pieces together, too. Any IP law that protects our work from being transformed by AI is going to turn back around and be used to fuck us expeditiously by people who have more money and better lawyers than we ever can. My position is that art wants to be free - not in the sense of "don't pay artists" (I do, in volume) but in the sense of freedom to flow and remix and play with; if I'm disrespecting the author's intent by making two of the guys they devoted hours to characterizing fuck nasty, then I sell it in zines for a dollar, I think that's kickass and there should be no laws saying I can't.
But these people also don't know how our community works. They don't necessarily know the community mythos of how you can't even look like you're making money off fanfiction, or Anne Rice is going to exhume herself from her disgusting mausoleum and ban fanfiction and NOBODY will EVER be able to do fanfiction EVER AGAIN!!!!! (which I think is silly given that fanartists are making businesses off the same thing we are doing, but w/e). They see our work the same way some might see code in a github repo: just information to be used, not a labor of love to be cherished and treated carefully. It's somewhat dehumanizing if you think of creative labor as having more "love" and inherent value than code... but having done both, I know both are labors of love.
I hear that your problem is that they can, in theory, create profit. Mine is too. You'll see I'm in another thread advocating for a good faith compromise - they say that their work here is not aimed at making money, and taking them in good faith, I'm advocating that they license it appropriately to make that concrete.
If OTW takes legal action like they say they will, it'll be interesting to see the results.
Ignoring everything written above. Anything. What can you do with millions of fan fiction as a regular person? Save it for future archival purposes. As a computer science student? Learn and try all sorts of ways to work with big data on real data sets, not synthetics. As a developer? Project to find works on text excerpts, anti-plagiarism systems, personalized recommendations based on preferences. As an AI/ML resercher? Systems for automatic content tagging, content moderation systems (age restrictions, trigger warnings). I do not add to this list the training of models for generating fanfics, because if we are talking about high quality results, this is not something that can be done by one person (time, very high cost). As a corporation that wants to profit from this? Nothing. It's definitely beyond the scope of an LLM for chatting with characters, and at that, hardly any corporation wants their chatbot to start using data from fanfics to respond to the user (hallucinations) or worse say something dangerous or offensive
As a developer? Project to find works on text excerpts, anti-plagiarism systems, personalized recommendations based on preferences. As an AI/ML resercher? Systems for automatic content tagging, content moderation systems (age restrictions, trigger warnings).
Thanks for giving a legit answer! I'm seeing so much "we have the right to, so shut up, you're not contributing anything to the world anyway" and "OK kiddies, let the adults do their work," but little elucidation of what the "adult work" being done could look like or what it is contributing to the world. I know multiple people for whom an automated content warning system, particularly one that can learn and adapt to their specific needs, would be a lifesaver. Interested to see what, if anything, comes out of this whole mess.
There are also some fannish hypotheses that I'd love to test, had I the knowledge to do so... in particular, the accusation that F/F writers are "puritans" bugs me, and I think you could gather empirical evidence that it is right or wrong by assessing language and themes in F/F vis-a-vis M/M or M/F against some kind of standard. But again, this isn't my field, and I try to respect people's desires for their work (even if it limits me) in any case.
"being a fanfiction author and advocating for IP law is shooting yourself in the foot" WHAT DO YOU MEAN????? FANFIC AUTHORS CAN'T MAKE MONEY!!!! THAT HOW WE'RE ABLE TO DO THIS!!!!!!!! THESE ASSHOLES CAN MAKE MONEY!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S PART OF THE ILLEGAL PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't comment on that when you seemingly don't have a good grasp on why this content is legal. Why do you think fanartist can make their art? Why do you think OTW has that abbreviation? It's the Organization for TRANSFORMATIVE Works for a reason.Long post incoming
You clearly don't remember when Anne Rice was throwing lawsuit threats at everything that moved, my child. Fanfiction and fanart exist in an interesting murky area where they could go either way - fair use or not, derivative or transformative work. OTW has, imo, the more compelling argument - that it's fair use and a transformative work - but it can go either way in court based on a number of factors. Same goes for fanart, although most fanartists deliberately flout that lately by taking money for fanart (have you ever wondered why the double standard? it's because of notable authors who were copyright trolls).
Stronger IP law that would protect writers from AI/ML use would kill fanfiction. A lot of folks don't know how AI/ML actually works - they think AO3 has just been fed into a great big skynet, and shreds of our works are popping out to make someone else easy money. But to some published authors, our work looks like taking their work to a shredder and pasting the pieces together, too. Any IP law that protects our work from being transformed by AI is going to turn back around and be used to fuck us expeditiously by people who have more money and better lawyers than we ever can. My position is that art wants to be free - not in the sense of "don't pay artists" (I do, in volume) but in the sense of freedom to flow and remix and play with; if I'm disrespecting the author's intent by making two of the guys they devoted hours to characterizing fuck nasty, then I sell it in zines for a dollar, I think that's kickass and there should be no laws saying I can't.
But these people also don't know how our community works. They don't necessarily know the community mythos of how you can't even look like you're making money off fanfiction, or Anne Rice is going to exhume herself from her disgusting mausoleum and ban fanfiction and NOBODY will EVER be able to do fanfiction EVER AGAIN!!!!! (which I think is silly given that fanartists are making businesses off the same thing we are doing, but w/e). They see our work the same way some might see code in a github repo: just information to be used, not a labor of love to be cherished and treated carefully. It's somewhat dehumanizing if you think of creative labor as having more "love" and inherent value than code... but having done both, I know both are labors of love.
I hear that your problem is that they can, in theory, create profit. Mine is too. You'll see I'm in another thread advocating for a good faith compromise - they say that their work here is not aimed at making money, and taking them in good faith, I'm advocating that they license it appropriately to make that concrete.
If OTW takes legal action like they say they will, it'll be interesting to see the results.
Bestie, most of us are old enough to remember the forum days.
If transformative works can't be copyrighted then any parody Youtube video or satire Tiktok couldn't be shown and monetized and yet they are being. React channels wouldn't exist full stop.
E.L James and Cassandra Cain wouldn't be able to make franchises and yet they have.
However, GenAi already has several cases of not being ruled as transformative.
You don't know how your own community works.