The Authors Guild has issued a sharp warning to publishers and literary agents after reporting emerged that some industry professionals have been feeding manuscripts and authors’ personal details into consumer-facing AI systems such as ChatGPT without consent. In a statement, the Guild said that uploading a copyrighted work or private information into such tools could infringe copyright or privacy rights and expose both the author’s intellectual property and personal data to further risk. It urged editors, agents and others with access to unpublished work not to prompt public chatbots with any author material unless they have written permission.

The Guild also drew a line between casual use and any AI deployment that has been formally agreed in contracts, saying that permitted systems should be sandboxed and protected by guardrails so manuscripts and author data are not used to train the models. In guidance on its website, the organisation has also recommended contract clauses to block unauthorised AI use and to require disclosure if AI-generated text is incorporated into a work.

Umair Kazi, the Guild’s director of policy and advocacy, said the organisation has long warned publishers that AI systems are built on material that may itself be infringing, and that AI use should be spelled out in author contracts. He told Publishers Weekly that the cases the Guild has heard about were not necessarily publisher-led editorial policies, but sometimes came down to individuals using AI because they were short of time and trying to meet a deadline. That concern lands in a sector where, according to PW’s 2025 Salary & Jobs Report, nearly two-thirds of respondents said their companies were already using AI in some form.

The debate has sharpened in recent weeks after Hachette pulled Mia Ballard’s horror novel "Shy Girl" from publication amid questions over whether significant parts of the text had been generated with AI. The Guardian reported that Ballard denies personally using AI and says the material was introduced by an acquaintance who edited an earlier self-published version, while TechCrunch said Hachette halted the US edition after an internal review. The episode has become a flashpoint for publishers trying to balance the efficiency promises of AI with the risk of eroding trust in authorship, originality and editorial standards.

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Source: Noah Wire Services