Artificial intelligence is anathema to many authors. After all, what is writing if not a labour of love, the zenith of human expression? In the war against robots, it was meant to be the last bastion of creativity. And yet, here we are… the tentacled reach of AI has begun infiltrating our bookshelves.
Stories about authors using AI, which have begun to steadily emerge as the software becomes more mainstream, are often met with incredulity. Most shocking was a report in March by The New York Times that one author’s buzzy horror novel, titled Shy Girl, would be pulled by a major publisher after it found purported use of AI. Its author, Mia Ballard, has denied personally using AI to write the novel, telling the newspaper that an acquaintance she had hired to work on an early self-published version had incorporated AI tools. The NYT shortly after cut ties with a freelance journalist after discovering he had used AI to help write a book review.
