Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj dove deep on the controversy around the book Shy Girl, which was cancelled by its publisher who alleged it was largely AI-generated.

Links on Shy Girl:

• The video from January 2026 that seems to have led to Shy Girl's cancellation: i'm pretty sure this book is ai slop - YouTube
• Publishing news journalist Alexandra Alter on the controversy over the cancellation of Shy Girl: A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared. - The New York Times
• Publishing industry analyst Thad McIlroy on what NYT omitted from their piece: I Broke the Year's Biggest Literary Story. The New York Times Took the Credit | The Walrus
• Two very "inside baseball" overviews of what happened:
  • The New Publishing Standard's deep dive on Shy Girl
  • Publisher's Weekly industry analysis
• What might be the last extant page on any of Hachette's sites about the book: Shy Girl: Read the femgore revenge novel that EVERYONE is talking about! by Mia Ballard - Books - Hachette Australia

Other links from this episode:

• Why AI detection is hard People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text - ACL Anthology (mistakenly attributed to MIT in the episode)
• Past episodes of this show that touched on the use of AI in book publishing:
  • Michael bets on "AI Sally Rooney" (from October 2024)
  • Anna Gomez enlisted AI for research assistance when writing a romance road trip (November 2024)
  • Sean Michaels wrote a book about AI and art by using AI for parts of it (November 2023)

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