Writer, Artist, and Fan Creator PSA!
FIC WRITERS AND FAN ARTISTS BE AWARE I received an email that I actually thought might have been from someone I'd been in contact with before, but turns out that no it wasn't. There were a few red flags, but the last reply sealed it. TO BE AVOIDED.
Each image has Alt Text if it's hard to read from the screenshots.
The Red Flags:
- Where is the money coming from? - Replies were not very personalised or responding directly to queries at first. - They're not age gating anything, and asking if they can use Mature rated works. - They're allowing fanworks on a site with adverts that'll pay them - Chat fucking GPT
Please feel free to share this warning far and wide, they're likely reaching out to a lot of creators to try and build a platform base. I absolutely do not trust anyone who used ChatGPT to find authors to *not* just feed our works into the machines. Also, profit from fanworks is dangerous to us all.
I mean seriously, how can they claim they won't allow AI then a couple of emails later say they used Chat fucking GPT to find me?
They're clearly expecting to profit from the ads on the site if they can afford to offer $100 to people signing up as early adopters, and especially if they're planning to do a big paid ad campaign for the sight too.
There's a reason AO3 doesn't have ads or make profit from hosting fanworks, and it's important to protect fanworks as a whole.
So if Bizarre Codex reach out to you, I strongly advise turning them down. It does not seem trustworthy at all.
