A prominent publisher is pulling a horror novel after the author was widely accused of using AI to help write the book, The New York Times reports.
Hachette Book Group, one of the largest publishing houses in the US, said it will discontinue selling “Shy Girl” by Mia Ballard in the UK, where it was released last fall and sold 1,800 print copies, per data cited in the reporting. It will also cancel plans to publish a US edition, which was slated to release this spring through its Orbit imprint.
“Hachette remains committed to protecting original creative expression and storytelling,” a Hachette spokeswoman said.
The spokesperson noted that Hachette requires all submissions to be original to the authors and that the authors disclose whether AI is used during the writing process, suggesting it views alleged AI usage not merely as an affront to creative principles, but as a contractual violation. (Several publishers have released books whose marketing explicitly mentioned experimenting with AI.)
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the Hachette spokeswoman said that both its US and UK imprints conducted a “lengthy investigation in recent weeks” before the decision was made not to publish.
Ballard, the author, denies personally using AI, claiming that an editor she hired to go over the book when she originally self-published it was responsible for using AI instead.
“This controversy has changed my life in many ways and my mental health is at an all time low and my name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do,” Ballard wrote in a statement to the NYT.
Ballard said she couldn’t provide more details on how the book was edited with AI because she was pursuing legal action.
The novel’s cancellation is illustrative of a mounting anti-AI sentiment that has especially taken a hold in the arts, and is one of the first examples of a major publisher dropping a book deal over accusations of AI usage.
Accusations of AI usage have swirled around “Shy Girl” since it became a minor hit in the self-published world last year, picking up steam among readers on TikTok.
Initial glowing praise soon gave way to suspicion. In January, a Reddit post from a user who claimed to be a book editor generated significant discussion around “Shy Girl,” flagging its prose for having the hallmarks of a large language model. (Some in the discussion also accused Ballard of using AI to write her responses in a written interview.)
In a YouTube video essay that’s since racked up over 1.2 million views, a reviewer thoroughly unpacked, over the course of nearly three hours, how the book appeared to be AI written. “i’m pretty sure this book is ai slop,” read the video title. Max Spero, the founder and CEO of the AI detection software Pangram, conducted his own test and found evidence that 78 percent of the book is AI-generated.
While both the publisher and readers both seem to feel they have a strong case that the book is AI written, the incident raises tough questions about how the industry will handle AI’s rapid but sneaky invasion into books. The self-publishing world, which major publishers are increasingly turning to find social-media-ready diamonds in the rough, is already rife with low effort, AI-generated dreck.
Given the tech’s popularity, it’s inevitable that other authors will use AI in their writing process, too. The question becomes whether it’s sustainable for a publisher to respond in dramatic fashion each time evidence of AI usage pops up as it’s done here. Will AI be off the table entirely for a major book deal, or will authors merely be encouraged to be upfront about using ChatGPT? We’re years into the AI boom, but are still just beginning to grapple with these problems.
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