The facts that media and tech are working this closely together should be very, very concerning.

There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.

I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

There's a question that I keep coming back to when I think about AI and creative work,

and that is who gets to set the standard, and maybe more importantly, who gets protected by it

and who gets sacrificed to it.

And to explore that, I want to talk about a story that I think we're all getting kind of wrong.

It's about a black woman author, a major publisher, a powerful newspaper, and an AI detection company

whose business model depends on all of us believing that their tool is the final word

on what counts as human. And it all starts with a horror novel called Shy Girl by author Mia Ballard.

Now, there's a good chance you've heard about this story already. I just talked about it on the podcast

stuff Mom never told you.

And I only now just realized that I only had about half of the story. Drey of the Dre of the Dre has been working tirelessly to fill in that other half. I'm Drey of the Drey'Rey and I'm thrilled to be here.

I think that even of big legacy journalism outlets, you have been doing the most in-depth coverage of a lot of things, but particularly the Mia Ballard, shy girl saga.

What was it that made you want to, that drew you to that story in the first place?

Yeah, I mean, I always keep an eye on the AI tech side of things, right? And I found just this interesting

convergence of the same day that that story broke, the White House sent over to Congress, the AI action plan, what they wanted

Congress to vote on and stuff. And I just found it to be such an interesting dichotomy of like,

here is this one story about like what happens to artists if they do or don't use AI. And then here

are, you know, here's a plan for the people to be protected, you know, at the top.

And so that kind of is what drew me to initially, but as somebody who works in media and is working, you know, with, I'm working with my agents on a book, you know, deal situation on my own. So I've been kind of exploring that, that world a little bit more. And I'm like, wow, this is, this is important. This is a landmark case. It's the first time, correct me if I'm wrong,

the first time a Big Five publisher cut ties with an author over suspected AI use. Is that right?

...