Once Bitten, Twice Shy

In the aftermath of Hachette’s decision to pull Mia Ballard’s novel Shy Girl over the alleged use of generative AI, the publishing industry has been slow to come to an ethical consensus on the issue, even as mistrust builds among authors, readers, and publishers. A unanimous Supreme Court ruling that internet service providers are not liable for piracy that occurs on their networks could introduce a new dimension to book publishers’ legal battle against AI companies. The National Book Critics Circle Awards were presented at an intimate ceremony last night in Manhattan, where winners and presenters opined on the troubling state of books coverage and the rise of AI. In other news, Gwyneth Paltrow will star in a Netflix film adaptation of Belle Burden’s memoir Strangers, and Vanessa Kirby and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II have signed on to lead a film adaptation of J. Michael Straczynski’s graphic novel Telepaths, per Deadline. The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel sits down with Shishir Mehrotra, who heads the company behind Grammarly, to discuss the AI writing tools’ “expert review” feature—which impersonated writers including Patel. For the Atlantic, Vauhini Vara looks at how AI writing is creeping into the opinion pages of the New York Times, and Wired looks at the growing number of reporters using the tech in their day-to-day work. Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Emma Alpern talks with several people—many of them neurodivergent—who have been falsely accused of using AI to write. And Sam Kieth, the comics creator behind The Maxx series, has died at 63.