AI Fanfare & Fanfiction: Do Fanfiction Writers Have Protections Against Artificial Intelligence?

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a familiar topic in everyday conversation and now increasingly in courts, there is a conflict between its use in creative and artistic spaces. While authors and artists enjoy copyright protections that might shield their works from being misused, there are millions of fanfiction writers who have no such protections. After all, the essence of fanfiction is rooted in writing about the characters, settings, and stories made by someone else. After decades of writing online, these fanfiction authors face the threat of having their works scraped up and fed into AI algorithms to be used in unknown ways, all over the internet. This Note dives into the specifics of what exactly these (rapidly becoming not-so-) niche online terms like “AI” and “fanfiction” are, and how they overlap with the law. Ultimately, this Note argues that fanfiction authors deserve greater recognition as creators, which would entitle them to protections against AI scraping, and offers a solution: that writers have existing self-regulatory powers to discourage AI and scraping behavior.