Hachette Book Group has said it will not publish the novel ‘Shy Girl’ due to concerns that artificial intelligence was used to generate the text.
The novel was scheduled to be published in the United States this spring. Hachette said it would also discontinue the book in the UK, where it was already in print.
Although the publisher claimed the decision was made after a thorough review of the text, reviewers on GoodReads and YouTube have speculated that the book may have been generated by AI. And the New York Times reported that the day before the announcement, it asked Hachette about her concerns about “Shy Girl.”
In an email to the NYT, author Mia Ballard denied using AI to write her novel and instead blamed an acquaintance she hired to edit the original self-published version of “Shy Girl.” Ballard said she was taking legal action and that as a result of the controversy, “my mental health is at an all-time low and my name has been ruined for something I didn’t even do myself.”
Author Lincoln Michel and other industry observers have noted that U.S. publishers rarely perform extensive editing when they acquire titles that have already been published in other formats.
