Vibe Coded AO3 Clone Site Down After Fanfic Authors Buried It With 2,000 Takedown Notices in a Single Day

ao3.life, a website inspired by the recent outage of fanfiction host Archive of Our Own (AO3), is now offline after creators flooded it with over 2,000 takedown requests in just one day. The site, created by Ganesh using AI agents and virtual machines, scraped fanfiction from the internet and offered audiobook versions for purchase.

Ganesh claimed authors would receive 91% of the profits, with the remaining 9% covering production costs. The site's homepage displayed an appeal to save AO3 works. However, the project faced widespread backlash from authors and readers, leading to its shutdown. Ganesh expressed remorse for infringing on authors' rights and stated that the site would remain down for up to four weeks.

AO3, owned by the Organization for Transformative Works, hosts nearly 18.5 million works and was down for security reasons at the time. The incident has raised concerns about AI scraping, repackaging, and monetizing fanfiction, which is generally considered fair use but may lead to legal disputes if sold.