Following the initial publication of the report, the Authors Guild issued a statement criticizing the use of AI tools by publishing professionals. bookstore clerk Some editors are reportedly uploading author personal information, including manuscripts, to consumer LLMs such as ChatGPT.
“Uploading or inputting copyrighted works or the author’s personal information into an AI system without permission may be a violation of the author’s copyright or privacy rights, and may put the author’s intellectual property and personal information at risk,” the statement said. “Editors, agents, and other industry personnel who have access to an author’s work may not upload a manuscript to a consumer-facing chatbot or encourage a consumer-facing chatbot to use the author’s work without first obtaining the author’s written permission.”
The guild also noted that any contractually permitted use of AI must adopt a “sandbox model with guardrails to prevent manuscript and author information from being used as training input.”
The Guild has supported authors in legal battles to hold major tech companies accountable for large-scale piracy of copyrighted works used to train AI models. Uploading an author’s work to a consumer model, even if it is not confidential, provides the model with further copyrighted material to incorporate into future responses.
Umair Qazi, director of policy and advocacy at the Authors Guild, said the organization has always told publishers to “remember that all AI is based on infringing material.” The Guild emphasizes that the use of AI in the publication process or post-publication must be included in author contracts, and provides a model clause of this type.
Like other industries, publishing professionals are already leveraging AI to some degree. Nearly two-thirds of respondents P.W.‘s 2025 Payroll and Employment Report states that their company uses AI in some way. But Kazi said these new reports should raise special concern.
Kharge said the use of AI is “in frequent discussions with publishers.” “Some publishing contracts say they can use AI in their normal business operations, but they say they are not going to use it editorially.”
The guild’s statement states that under no circumstances should “publishers use AI to edit manuscripts, except for basic spelling and grammar checking applications.”
Kaazi added that the use of editorial AI that the guild is aware of is “not a use of AI.” [under] Rather than being dictated by a publisher, someone was pressed for time and decided to use AI to meet a deadline. ”
of bookstore clerk‘s report was particularly relevant to editors, but noted that using AI to “read” manuscripts is becoming a more common practice across the industry.
This came just weeks after Hachette stopped publishing Mia Ballard’s controversial horror novel shy girl After learning that a significant amount of text was generated by AI. Some criticized the publisher’s decision, noting that Hachette said it uses AI for a variety of internal tasks, including generating text for marketing copy and “identifying AI submissions.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Curtis Brown’s agent was uploading the manuscript. According to The Bookseller, Curtis Brown’s agent reported that his editor, not the agent himself, had done this.
