1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 30
Summary
A 25-page document posted by an anonymous X account identified 38 popular “Heated Rivalry” fan stories as using text from Anthropic’s Claude without disclosure, jolting the fandom.
Within hours, the allegations spread from X to Threads, Reddit, Bluesky and TikTok, where thousands of fans denounced the writers and some targeted them with comments and public shaming.
Several authors deleted accounts or locked their works as fans labeled the episode a “fan fiction Panama Papers,” while others said the pile-on had turned into a witch hunt.
The backlash hit a community already highly sensitive to AI: fan-fiction writers were early critics of tech companies scraping their work and had begun locking stories and adding “No A.I.” warnings.