Novels: Did someone stay up late? Or is it just AI?
On Tuesday, Peter Biles talked about generative AI invading publishing. In particular, he notes, “In March of 2026, the horror novel Shy Girl was pulled from publication after the author was suspected of using AI to help her write it.”
–Limited Availability.
At Futurism, Frank Landymore reports,
Ballard, the author, denies personally using AI, claiming that an editor she hired to go over the book when she originally self-published it was responsible for using AI instead.
“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,” [Mia] Ballard wrote in a statement to the NYT.
Ballard said she couldn’t provide more details on how the book was edited with AI because she was pursuing legal action.
“Novel Pulled From Shelves After Author Is Accused of Using AI,” March 30, 2026
Blaming the editor here gives pause for thought. Many of us insist that editors use a much older technology called Track Changes. Because the author must then approve the changes, an author is unlikely to be ignorant of changes that sounded like AI dreck. Perhaps a court case will reveal more.
Landymore adds, “The self-publishing world, which major publishers are increasingly turning to find social-media-ready diamonds in the rough, is already rife with low effort, AI-generated dreck.”
Great.
Can you tell if a passage of writing was generated in whole or in part by AI?
GPTZero, built by a college student, claims to detect “AI content from ChatGPT, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, and checks writing quality to make every word worth reading.”
We tried it on some stories from Mind Matters News and kept getting the same message back:
We are highly confident this text is entirely human – AI 0% mixed 0% human 100%
They’re right and we plan to keep things that way. In later stories, we will look at how the system knows that. Chances are, it includes spotting many things the rest of us can guess too.
And finally, good writing is hard work. That personal touch is what makes the result worth reading.
