Artificial Intelligence: Who Writes This Junk?
The literary world recently erupted in frenzy after it was discovered that fantasy author Lena McDonald not only used generative artificial intelligence (AI) to create her latest book, but that she had left the prompt in the final copy. While there is a general sense of disgust at an author for being lazy enough to utilize AI to do the writing for them, more outrage could be directed at the actual prompt itself. The portion of AI text left in Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 remarked that “I've rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree's style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements”—noting that not only did McDonald not come up with the words herself, but that she was openly trying to plagiarize the style of another successful author who writes in similar genres. McDonald isn’t alone in this shame as authors KC Crowne and Rania Faris suffered similar controversies after their books were published with prompts like McDonald’s left in the final copy.