Book publisher Minotaur, which is owned by leading publishing company Macmillan US, has walked away from a $2.4 million deal for an unpublished debut novel “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body” by author Jerry Falade.
As Deadline reports, questions surrounding the use of AI during the writing of the book made the publisher drop the contract altogether. But it’s not because the company is drawing an ethical line in the sand while highlighting a major problem for the industry — instead, Minotaur is staying away because it may not be able to secure the copyright if the book contains passages written by an AI.
It’s truly a sign of the times. There’s a growing crisis as AI slop continues to make it increasingly difficult for genuine writers to stand out. Whether accusations of authors having used AI are founded or not almost seems beside the point — the tech has made a huge mess of the publishing world that feels increasingly impossible to clean up.
Despite the latest crime novel being currently unpublished, film and TV studios around the world had already begun jostling for rights for “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body,” according to Deadline, making it a particularly hairy situation. But AI detectors exposed apparent “fingerprints,” or signs that the author had made use of the tech while drafting the novel. Falade has denied the accusations.
“[The author] produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world,” Hodgman Literary independent agent Sandy Hodgman told international publishers in an email obtained by Deadline. “Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion.”
“During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with [the author] for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilizing AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process,” she added. “We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.”
As a result, several companies that had already started selling rights to the crime novel stopped altogether, pulling out of the project.
It’s a precarious inflection point for an industry already reeling from a massive influx of lazy AI slop. Human authors are seeing their life’s work get ripped off by generative AI tools. Amazon is being flooded with entirely AI-generated books, drowning out works by actual human authors.
It’s become such a big problem, even OpenAI directed its blockbuster ChatGPT to start refusing requests to copy a specific author’s style, as Ars Technica reported earlier this week.
Yet glaring questions over the use of AI and copyright infringement remain unanswered as countless lawsuits work their way through the court system. Just earlier this month, a group of major publishers sued Google, accusing it of illegally scraping millions of copyrighted books to train its Gemini AI model.
Whether AI was used in the writing of the sought-after novel remains murky, making the developing situation particularly intriguing. According to entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider, the author of “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body” will have to return the money.
“The accusations are wrong, and I am completely innocent,” the author told Sneider over the phone. “I was on the verge of success, and then all of a sudden, there were rumors, but no one asked me anything. I don’t know why my agency did not have my back.”
“I’ve lost so much already,” the author added. “I have no one to call… no friends in this industry. I don’t know anything. I simply wrote my manuscript, and it sparked crazy bidding wars across multiple countries.”
The news comes after author Mia Ballard’s novel, “Shy Girl,” was pulled from shelves back in March after she was widely accused of using AI to help write the book, as The New York Times reported at the time.
“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,” she told the newspaper.
More on authors and AI: Novel Pulled From Shelves After Author Is Accused of Using AI