Despite a public narrative of resistance against generative artificial intelligence—highlighted by copyright lawsuits against tech giants and the cancellation of books allegedly written with large language models (LLMs)—three major US publishers are internally adopting these technologies without author consent or public disclosure.
According to interviews with more than two dozen employees who requested anonymity to protect their jobs, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette are utilizing tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to draft publicity materials, compose back-cover copy, communicate with literary agents, design cover art, and produce marketing assets, often under direct executive guidance.
Industry insiders suggest that recent high-profile cancellations of titles like Hachette’s Shy Girl and Macmillan’s Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body represent only a fraction of AI-related enforcement. One editor noted that nearly every imprint has experience canceling books by respected authors due to blatant AI use that never reached the news cycle.
At HarperCollins, senior leadership secured Claude licenses from Anthropic earlier this year but struggled with implementation. Consequently, dozens of junior and senior staff members were “voluntold” to serve as “AI Champions,” tasked with identifying use cases during monthly brainstorming sessions. When employees raised concerns regarding the legal, ethical, and environmental implications of AI during one such session, the facilitator reportedly dismissed these issues as “the cost of doing business.”
Following this dismissal, the publisher added a disclaimer to its internal employee portal stating that while AI has an environmental impact, it constitutes only a small portion of an individual’s total digital carbon footprint. This move frustrated many workers, with one staffer describing the sessions as insulting given the industry’s long-standing struggles to secure adequate salaries—entry-level pay at Big Five firms and Scholastic averaged approximately $47,583 in 2023.
HarperCollins has also acquired licenses for ChatGPT and Jasper, an agentic platform designed for end-to-end marketing workflows. While some divisions have fully committed to AI-generated content, including marketing videos, workers across HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette indicate that the most prevalent application of LLMs remains the generation of publicity copy.
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