It's the Brian Laira Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

So now we turn to artificial intelligence and a controversy it has created in the book publishing world.

Last week, Hachette Book Group, which is one of the largest publishers in the United

States, right, polled a forthcoming book after widespread allegations online that the author

used AI to help write the horror novels.

The author, Mia Ballard, has denied using AI to help write the book titled Shy Girl.

She said an editor had hired, she had hired for the self-published version of the novel,

had used AI without her knowledge.

But still, there's an AI component to this story.

Hachette has canceled the book Spring Release here in the United States and said it will

also discontinue the book in the UK, where it was already published last fall, and the

stat I see is that it has already sold 1,800 print copies.

Our next guest argues that the shy girl fiasco, as she calls it, highlights not only the challenges of AI in fiction

that publishers are having a hard time meeting, but also how that might influence

readers trust in the art form. Andrea Bartz is a novelist, most recently the author of The Last

Ferry Out. Her guest

op-ed in the New York Times that you might have read is titled, The Shy Girl Fiasco shows

why trust in writers is plummeting. Andrea Barts, thanks for coming on to talk about your

op-ed. Welcome to WNYC. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me on.

So for listeners who haven't been following this story, how did Hachette come to realize

that Shy Girl was written partly or largely with AI?

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