AO3.life shut down on November 2 after republishing fan fiction without authors’ permission during an outage at Archive of Our Own. The clone offered paid AI narration as well as free reading. Its creator said 2,000 takedown requests arrived in one day. Authors also challenged a removal procedure requiring access to their unavailable original profiles.
AO3.life stopped operating on November 2 after authors objected to its copying of fan fiction. It had appeared while Archive of Our Own, an online archive for fan-created stories known as AO3, was unavailable. The Mary Sue described fan accounts of an apology replacing the clone. The original archive's operator, the Organization for Transformative Works, had taken its service offline on October 29 to address a security problem.[1], [2]
The separate site let visitors read copied works free but charged for AI-generated audio after a three-minute sample. The creator, Ganesh, proposed giving authors 91 per cent of revenue and allocating 9 per cent to processing. Authors had not authorized the copying. Some said stories restricted to signed-in archive users appeared on the clone too. Ganesh said 11 audiobooks had been made through the site.[1]
Ganesh said 2,000 removal requests arrived within a day. Authors seeking removal were asked to add an ownership note to their original archive profiles, which were inaccessible during the outage. Writers criticized that requirement as well as the reuse of their work. The original archive's operator said no data had been lost and warned that restoring service could take four weeks.[1]
