We Have Our First Big-Five AI Scandal

Hachette has pulled the literary horror novel Shy Girl, by Mia Ballard, after accusations that it was written with the help of generative AI, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Described in marketing copy as being “for fans of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and Lisa Taddeo’s Animal,” the book, which was originally self-published, is about a young woman named Gia who enters into a submissive relationship with a wealthy man who asks her to act like a dog.

It’s the first time a major publisher has publicly scrapped a book because it may have been written or edited using a large language model. The novel, which was published in the U.K. last year and was set to be released in the U.S. on May 19, faced a flood of critiques from readers online. In a nearly three-hour January 19 video titled “i’m pretty sure this book is ai slop,” the popular book YouTuber Frankie’s Shelf pointed out that it uses the word sharp or sharply 159 times (the video now has 1.2 million views). “I wear a pink dress, the kind that promises softness and delivers none,” its first lines read. “Its tulle is brittle and sharp, brushing against my fur like a thousand tiny teeth, a cruel lover that bites with every move.”

Ballard maintains that she didn’t use AI to write her book, claiming that an editor she hired is to blame. “My mental health is at an all time low and my name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do,” she wrote in an email to the Times. In a statement, Hachette said it asks its authors to alert them to any use of AI during the writing process. But the industry is mainly relying on writers to self-disclose, and readers are not great at identifying LLM-generated text. Some might even prefer it. “Mia Ballard’s writing submerged me — velvety and hypnotic — until I was completely immersed in Gia’s unraveling,” one Goodreads reviewer wrote last March. “This story got under my skin in the very best way.” Writers and editors, beware, though: The Reddit threads that snowballed since then suggest most readers are squeamish about AI-generated fiction — at least for now.