Have you ever been so into a fandom that you’ve wanted to consume more content about it? Well, fanfiction’s always been everyone’s buddy, full of creative headcanons, long-form stories, multi-genre and multi-universal perspectives, and fanfiction for just one popular fandom could fill up a library. However, with the recent rise of generative AI, parts of fanfiction culture have died, and it’s not for the better.

There are many homes for fanfiction, like Archive of Our Own, popularly known as AO3, Tumblr, Wattpad, Quotev, and many more websites. They’ve been hubs of people’s humane and creative thoughts, ranging from content that is more suitable for adults to content that can be everyone’s cup of tea. That’s one thing that fanfiction does that nothing can ever really replicate: it automatically creates a hub of comfort through natural representation of different people, whether that be people of different sexual orientations, different races, and different interests and ideas.

However, recently, AI has caused many fanfic authors to feel as if their writing has been undermined for some words typed into a half-assed prompt bank. The rise of AI causes a paranoia that shouldn’t exist about whether fanfiction is authentic or not. It’s not easy to tell, either, considering many authors are so incredibly talented and well-versed in the English language– and this raises the question that many could consider as the elephant in the room: are there things AI should or shouldn’t be in? The answer is yes.

Erasing human writing with the creation of works through AI is, in fact, like the burning of the Library of Alexandria; creative ways of interpreting characters into a piece of writing are lost, and previously-made human works are left to collect dust while soulless, impassioned works are left to be what’s left of fandom culture. It stunts the creativity that makes fandoms so alive, and it does stunt certain things in the brain. Writing fanfiction on your own without the help of AI develops your critical thinking skills due to the amount of media literacy needed to make the characters as close to the canon as possible, or to even work along a well-developed plot that doesn’t have to be close to the canon storyline. 

Fanfiction is one of the many human things that a fandom holds, and it should be cherished. AI shouldn’t ruin something that has brought so much joy to many, and it’s up to us, the ones who enjoy content from different media, to prevent this from happening.