Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting

Major book publishers have been quietly using AI language models for tasks like writing publicity copy, designing cover art, and drafting emails to literary agents, even as they have publicly fought against generative AI in other contexts. Workers at three of the Big Five publishers report that executives have pushed staff to adopt these tools and find new uses for them, while also dismissing employee concerns about legal, ethical, and environmental impacts. The practice matters because publishers are applying AI to content and communications without public disclosure or author consent, and there are concerns that unpublished manuscript text could be fed into AI systems that share data with external servers. This tension between publishers' public stance against AI and their behind-the-scenes adoption of the technology has prompted employee backlash and raised questions about whether AI-generated rejection letters and marketing materials harm relationships with authors, agents, and readers.