Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to generate creative materials that were, until recently, solely within the domain of humans to produce. As we are an organization of primarily creators, defining the role that AI will have in the Silmarillion Writers' Guild (SWG) is essential as this technology rapidly evolves.
AI is broadly defined as the use of datasets by a computer to solve problems. This can encompass a variety of uses, many of which have long been acceptable to fandom communities and a part of creating fanworks. For this specific policy, we are referring to AI where datasets have been obtained from scraping the web for content used to "train" computers to provide humanlike responses, and where users generate text, images, and other fanworks through prompting with text or an image. A "fanwork" is any material posted by an SWG member to our site that uses or responds to aspects of Tolkien's world and refers to the work taken in its entirety as well as component pieces.
This policy also applies to content produced by site moderators and volunteers, such as but not limited to banners, challenge prompts, and news announcements.
AI-Generated Fanworks
The SWG is a group and archive that exists for people to share Tolkien-based fanworks they have created. The keyword here is people. AI-generated work is not created by a person but by a computer algorithm. Therefore, AI-generated fanworks are not permitted on the SWG. This includes artwork, fiction, meta and research articles, and all other fanworks that may be wholly or partially generated using AI.
This restriction includes AI-generated content that accompanies a fanwork that you produced yourself, such as an illustration that accompanies a story you wrote or album art for a playlist you made. It also includes partial use of AI, such as a passage in a story you wrote that was AI-generated, or AI-generated artwork that you further edited or manipulated.
If a member is found to be posting AI-generated fanworks, those fanworks will be removed from the site, and similar to our plagiarism policy, the member will be issued a strike in our three-strike system. In special cases, the SWG moderators reserve the right to modify this. Per our Site Etiquette, if a work on the site is suspected to be AI-generated, you should use the Notify Mods link and provide any supporting evidence for your report. Under no circumstances should accusations of any rule violations be posted as comments or anywhere within the SWG beyond private communications with moderators.
AI-detection software does not reliably identify AI-generated works. The SWG moderators will not use this software to make a judgment about whether fanworks posted to the site violate this policy and should be removed. This means that we are relying heavily on our members to act in good faith and be honest about the source of their work.
Acceptable Uses of AI
All SWG members have the option of uploading a userpic to their profiles. Members may use AI-generated images in their userpics, as userpics are not required to be fanworks and are thus not subject to a ban on AI-generated fanworks.
AI can be used to translate texts into different languages. If the fanwork itself was not AI-generated, then the use of AI to provide or assist with translations is acceptable.
SWG Position on AI
Both professional and amateur creators have raised numerous concerns around the use of AI to generate creative content. This section does not contain policy or rules, which are located above, but our organization's broader stance on the issues posed by AI for our and other creative communities. Note that this position may not reflect the views of all SWG members, moderators, or volunteers.
- AI "learns" using content posted online. It incorporates this content into its algorithms, meaning that the art, fiction, articles, or other content an AI was trained on contributes to the content generated by that AI. The creators of those works in many cases did not give their permission for their work to be used in this way. While we acknowledge the complexity of copyright, particularly concerning fanworks as transformative and derivative works, we affirm that rights holders should be asked permission prior to the for-profit use of their work. In the case of AI, both professional and amateur works have been exploited to profit already wealthy tech corporations without permission from or compensation paid to the creators whose work was used to generate that profit. The SWG affirms that this is an unethical and inappropriate use of creative works.
- AI learning requires human labor to eliminate language and images from datasets that include disturbing, offensive, and illegal content. This has been broadly recognized as traumatizing to the people tasked to do it. This work is largely outsourced to people in developing nations who are underpaid, exploited, and punished for attempts to unionize or otherwise improve their working conditions. Tech corporations then profit on not just this work but their ability to lowball compensation and fail to adequately address the mental health needs of their employees.
- While we are a group that, by definition, includes only amateur creative works on our archive, we feel an affinity for professional creators who practice the same arts and in some cases are professional creators ourselves. AI threatens the livelihood of many professionals in the creative, research, and other fields. It is important to our organization that we stand in solidarity with both AI "trainers" and creative professionals as they assert their right to their livelihood and the value of the work that they produce.
- As AI technology evolves, it is likely that many tools used by fanworks creators will increasingly incorporate AI that poses various ethical problems. We affirm that responsibility and accountability for the ethical problems posed by AI lie not with the fans and creators who may use the resulting technology but with the corporations that profit from it. Criticizing and shaming fans who use AI is not a productive step toward ensuring ethical use of this technology and creates a hostile climate for fans that runs contrary to our values as an organization.
Preventative Steps Against AI Bot Scraping
In order to minimize the likelihood that SWG members' fanworks are being scraped to train AI, we block the following scrapers using robots.txt: CCBot and ChatGPT-User. We've also added "noai" and "noimageai" tags to headers on all pages, which blocks AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt, such as Img2dataset. Note that, while we cannot guarantee that these measures will block all AI scrapers (and certainly won't block those that ignore the rules), we hope this will minimize AI scraping of our members' fanworks.
