My guess is their embrace of generative AI and the shutdown are directly connected. In some industries, I might not jump to that conclusion—but when your core audience and customer are creators who vehemently oppose generative AI, it felt like a wildly tone-deaf move.
Reposted from
Gang Spocking Victim
Less than a year after a full-throated embrace of AI, NaNoWriMo is shutting down :
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AFAIK, there was no money to be made, so I think the cause of the derail was more delusion than greed
Oh and the fact they overworked volunteers into the ground. I glad they’re dying. The company deserves to burn.
https://archive.is/hCA8E is an archived version of their statement on AI, which they later edited, and later removed entirely.
People might've accepted "AI can be useful for some writers." NaNo said "AI haters are classist & ableist."
https://nanotoons.org/
This post gives an idea of their follow up defending the genAI endorsement though:
These pie charts are basically inverses of one another—exactly what I would have expected.