An author who lost a $2 million book deal over allegations he may have used AI to write it is denying the claims, saying they are racially motivated.
Jerry Falade, a grad student at Southern Methodist University, spoke out on Tuesday after his own reps pulled the plug on the sale of his first crime novel, “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body.”
“Definitely innocent!!!,” he wrote in an Instagram story. “They CAN’T and WON’T stop this Black boy’s light from shining!!,” he wrote in a second post.
In a series of social media posts, he said claims against him are part of a historical pattern of diminishing the intellectual contributions of people of color.
“If you’re a Person of Color and you secure a lucrative deal in history, someone, somewhere, will accuse you of using AI,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, he added that white authors “brag about using AI all the time.”
Fourteen publishers had bet on the US rights for Falade’s debut novel, and he ultimately inked a deal with Minotaur, a Macmillan US imprint for a reported $2 million. HarperCollins Publishers won the UK rights.
Not long after the deals closed, Falade’s agent at Europa Content notified the publishers in a letter that he could no longer support the book after concerns were raised about the author’s possible use of AI to write it.
Falade told the Wall Street Journal that he only used AI for research, “and not for writing the book itself.”
He explained that he relied on a tool that let him run an open-source AI model on his own device, to obtain details on topics like what chemical someone might use to dissolve a human body.
The tool he used doesn’t keep or share extensive search histories, raising eyebrows. But Falade said he used that method because of the grizzly subject matter of the questions for his crime novel — which he felt could raise red flags if they were tracked.
The scribe said that none of the editors he met with during the book-sale process asked about AI usage, noting that he never consented to having his manuscript run through AI detection software.
He said it was “very suspicious” that much of the coverage of his situation has focused on the growing capabilities of that software, adding that he has retained a lawyer.
He told the Journal that he was contacted by a reporter who said there were rumors of AI usage. Hours later, he learned his agent, Marc Gerald, was pulling support for his tome.
Falade declined to comment on the current status of the book deals.
Gerald said he is no longer Falade’s literary agent and declined to comment further Tuesday.
A rep for Macmillan confirmed Friday that the publisher participated in an auction for “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body” and that “the agent ultimately pulled the book.”
The spokeswoman didn’t respond to requests for comment this week on the current status of the book deal with Falade. A rep for HarperCollins, which like The Post is owned by News Corp, also declined to comment on the status of its deal.
In the meantime, Falade said, he is going forward with his next work.
“Trust me, when this book is finally released, the bidding war we saw on ‘Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body’ will be child’s play compared to this,” he told the Journal.