Last summer, a scandal rocked the French literary world when award-winning Quebec-based author, Thélyson Orélien, was accused of using AI in his writing.

Well, not just using it: Pangram, considered a reliable detector, gave his work a 100% AI score.

The book was dropped from further prize consideration, amid accusations of racism and claims that AI detectors are not reliable. Also that they may discriminate against minority voices like that of Haiti-born Orélien.

But AI is reaching deeper into the publishing world than that.

Accusations are flying around the tech mags

At Gizmodo, for example, Mike Pearl charges that “Cover art, cover text, and even publicity are reportedly being slopped up”:

Wired talked to “more than two dozen” anonymous publishing industry employees, and found that three of the big five publishers are allegedly using AI and failing to notify the authors, let alone the public.

In part, this is publicity-related. Publishers are reportedly generating PR material and cover copy with tools like ChatGPT and Claude. They’re also, according to Wired’s sources, using image generators to create cover art.

“As They Supposedly Battle AI Slop, Major Publishers Reportedly Cover Their Books in It,” October 10, 2026

Meanwhile, he notes, the Big Five publishers are now suing Meta for copyright infringement. Just what copyright infringement means in a mess of AI gen is unclear.

Why publishers are resorting to AI

In the Wired story that Pearl is referring to, culture writer Adam Morgan says that the publishers are pushing staff to get used to slinging the slop, starting with publicity materials:

At HarperCollins senior leaders purchased Claude licenses from Anthropic months ago “but very quickly realized they didn’t know how to implement them,” according to a current employee. Dozens of junior- and senior-level staff were then “voluntold” to become “AI Champions” and were tasked with discovering use cases in monthly brainstorming sessions with staff across the company…

Some HarperCollins staffers were unnerved by the brainstorming sessions. “It was such a slap in the face,” says one employee. “We’ve been making valid business cases for years to be paid a healthy salary, and instead they spent that money on software that most of us don’t really want.”

“Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting,” October 9, 2026

And then we learn that publishers have actually slashed staff:

“It’s skeleton crews everywhere you look,” says one employee. “Large teams have been reduced to just five or six people, give or take, and we’re doing double or triple the number of books. No wonder people are taking shortcuts. I don’t judge them for that. I judge the company for shoving the shortcuts down our throats and saying, ‘Do this or we fall behind.’” “Staff Are Revolting,”

Briefly, lots of people can write well with no need for AI. But the publisher has to pay them.

The publishers are slashing staff instead because they are not making money. There is a good reason for that: people are not reading as much.

It’s unlikely that the book will disappear but…

Many have pointed to the fact that reading is on the decline anyway among American adults. That darkens the future of the publishing companies.

But the development is a natural one. For centuries, the advent of printing and widespread literacy meant that people got information and entertainment by reading. But there are so many other choices today — Siri, YouTube, and chatbots are only a few, and most of them are free or cheap.

Books will, of course, remain, as a specialized resource for people interested in the serious exposition of ideas, especially new ones. If we want to understand a topic in any depth — say, the history of religious freedom or the holographic universe theory — we must be prepared to sit down, pay attention, and read through carefully structured arguments and expositions.

Time spent thinking is a hard ceiling

Image Credit: mavoimages - Adobe Stock

The time investment can be made more efficient and effective. But it cannot just be automated away — any more than we can automate getting our exercise away. But, realistically, the market for books about ideas is much smaller than the traditional market for lurid tell-alls or secrets for losing weight.

If my assessment is correct, future books will mainly introduce ideas, new and old, that require us to learn and think, rather than merely react and enjoy. This small market will survive in some form because ideas, like learning, cannot simply be automated. And the book is, in principle, an efficient method.

Note: There is a prize for AI writing, AI Pen.

On a personal note…

My own introduction to AI slop in publishing was the many efforts to separate me from my hard-earned cash via claims to publicize one of my books.

The promos pouring into my Inbox are flabby and syrupy, conveying a pseudo-knowledge/pseudo-appreciation that bears no relation to real interactions apart from the use of the English language. I found myself asking, Who on earth has the time to write all this [deletable]?

Then, about a year ago, the penny dropped. No one is writing it! The sheer volume landing in my Trash folder is mostly AI gen.

Prediction: The next big AI advance will be warning flags that enable a number of such Inbox items to be spotted by an AI detector and directed to the Trash folder at once.