#comment bot

A lot of Ao3 writers have probably encountered these autogenerated compliments at this point. Initially, they were very hit or miss, and if you had a fair sized portfolio, it became quickly obvious that they were autogenerated, following a pattern or completely missing the plot. That’s changing though.

The comment bot is getting more sophisticated. This latest round I got were using the tags on my angsty/emotion-focused fic to tailor the auto-generated compliments. I compared to some I saw on other genres, and it’s definitely going off the tags. Bad news, that whoever is doing this is actively developing and ‘improving’ the bot.

It’s potentially very damaging to new writers. People who initially think this is real, respond honestly and heartfelt, and then later realize it’s a bot, they’ll feel humiliated and discouraged. It’s a cruel thing to mess with people like this. It’s natural to crave these to be real, natural to want a response like this to the writing you poured your heart into.

Even the lucky ones who weren’t fooled and either get enough real validation or don’t crave validation from comments… still have to expend mental energy distrusting every guest comment, sorting through a pile of increasingly realistic bot comments to report and delete them.

So just… vent/psa I guess. To my knowledge, nothing to be done to stop the bot except block guest comments. I encourage guest readers to create Ao3 accounts, these bots aren’t going away, and more and more writers are blocking guest comments or entirely member-locking fics.

A last note, to those who might not know this: You can edit all your Ao3 works at once, disabling or enabling guest comments on all of them.

The next edition of Ao3 comment bots have arrived, and unfortunately these are trying to be less obvious then the previous ones. While the previous bots simply accused you of using A.I. which made the bots very easy to detect. These new bots attempt to act like a normal commenter by showering your fic with compliments. I’ve been getting hit with them for the past few days but they’ve become a bit more sophisticated now, generating comments longer than one sentence and seemingly trying to blend in far more. This has caused some moments of confusion where I wasn’t sure whether or not to delete a comment because I wasn’t sure whether or not it was a real reader who left it. 

These bots have a weakness though. Since it’s not an actual person, they can’t say anything about your story specifically, only making very general statements like the following. 

It comment above contains a compliment about dialogue but it can’t pinpoint a specific scene or moment because this is a bot. These bots also feel way too... “professional”? Using words like “added a delightful layer” and some more things in their language that I can’t exactly describe that makes the whole thing feel like it was written by some stereotypical movie critic rather than an actual commenter. People don’t talk like this. 

Sometimes it’s downright comical like the following 

The story being commented on is a legal document. It’s literally made to look like an in-universe legal document. That’s it. Yeah, I’m sure a legal document made you feel all that. 

Still, even with that, I’ve found myself scratching my head sometimes thinking “should I delete it?” because they are becoming more and more indistinguishable from real comments. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and sometimes the comments are able to resonate with something in the story by complete chance. Like, for example, some comments congratulate you on your fluff writing. If that bot comment is by complete chance left on a fluff fic, then it will be much harder to distinguish from an actual comment. 

I really wanted to talk about this because I haven’t seen that much chatter outside of discord about it and I feel it’s something everyone needs to be aware of because it is just as, if not, more dangerous then the A.I. comment bot because of these bots actually trying to hide and blend in.

For all readers out there, when you comment on a fic, I feel it is now more important than ever to be specific. Comment bots will never be able to read the story, so pick out different scenes and moments that you liked and comment on those. This will not only make the authors day, but it will also help you distinguish yourself from bots. I’m worried that one day, I’m going to accidentally delete a legitimate comment thinking it’s a bot and that will suck if that happens.  

*yeets this and runs away*