By Honora Quinn ’27
Staff Writer
You don’t have to travel very far at Mount Holyoke College to get wrapped up in a conversation regarding AI and its implications in creative or intellectual works. Recently, the English department hosted a roundtable with students and faculty, and a course called “Writing & AI Technology” will be co-taught this fall by English department Chair Kate Singer and film media theater professor Amy Rogers. Outside of our campus gates, it’s still a constant topic of debate, with think-pieces and arguments flooding the internet by the dozens, if not hundreds.
As we all wait with baited breath to see who will toe the line into further uncharted waters, it appears that AI might have already found its way into traditional publishing, and even more alarming, into the catalog of one of the Big 5 publishers — Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins — right under our noses.
Is “Shy Girl”, merely the first example of “AI slop” to slip through the cracks and into the big leagues of publishing, or is this whole saga just an unfortunate witch hunt that will set a precedent in the coming years?
It started three months ago, when Reddit user herendethelesson, created a post on r/horrorlit titled “Shy Girl by Mia Ballard. Does anyone else think this was written by ChatGPT?” This post broke down the numerous reasons why the reported veteran editor suspected Ballard used a Large Language Model — abbreviated as LLM — while working on the book, ahead of its slated US release for April 2026.
Further, on March 19, the New York Times published an article by Alexandra Alter, who reported that Pangram — an AI detection platform — had run the book through its system and produced “results [which] indicated that the book was 78 percent A.I. generated.” This number alarmed the book’s publisher, Hachette, so much that they pulled the book from publication soon after, according to a followup piece, also by Alter, with the UK edition also discontinuing after months on the shelves.
Ballard, came out against the accusation of AI use in her novel in the original article from the New York Times, and in a now-deleted comment on the 2 hour and 40 minute Youtube video by frankie’s shelf “i’m pretty sure this book is ai slop” from Jan. 19. In her response to the article, Ballard said that she had not used AI, and that instead “an acquaintance she hired to edit the self-published version of the novel had used A.I.”
Yet the court of public opinion had already made its decision. The publisher was lauded for standing firm against AI and the career of the author was destroyed, despite her denial of the practice and limited proof beyond the initial test, which was later confirmed to be on a pirated edition of “Shy Girl” circulated, according to Youtube and Substack creator the Drey Dossier.
On the topic of AI in publishing and “Shy Girl”, Mount Holyoke News contacted creative writing professor Andrea Lawlor, to try to understand this turning point in publishing.
In an email interview, professor Lawlor stated, “My sense is that publishers have multiple concerns about authors using AI, and from the publishers' perspective I think there are two major downsides to AI use, both economic. First, publishers are rightly concerned that work generated by or created with generative AI / LLMs is not currently possible to copyright, which impacts their ability to collect income based on owning specific rights to the work. And secondly, I suspect that the use of AI will impact writers' perceived prestige, and that will also impact book sales. I'm sure some publishers are also concerned about ethical and aesthetic implications.”
While the “Shy Girl” situation is still shifting, the fact remains that AI discourse and online rumors can spiral out of control, damaging authors and publishers alike, a new reality within the literary world. In understanding this as a reality, it is only increasingly important that we learn to further question our sources and investigate on our own, rather than spreading rumors. For not doing such simply adds fuel to the fire, regardless of who gets burned.
Whitney White ’28 contributed fact-checking.