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Is SHY GIRL really AI slop? The facts, breakdown and legal issues from two lawyers.
42 Plays17 days ago
Heather and Veronica are LIVE at TNTNC in Raleigh, North Carolina and dive into the most recent controversy of SHY GIRL by Mia Ballard. Is it actually AI? Did Hachette pull the title too soon or not soon enough? What are the legal ramifications and what can authors do to protect themselves if they are accused of writing an AI book?
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Transcript
Introduction and Event Context
00:00:00
Heather Roberts
I'm Heather Roberts. I'm Veronica Adams, and we are 1852 Media. And this is for book's sake. So we do not have music, and that's okay. We are here live at TNT in Raleigh, North Carolina. This author conference and book signing event has really been fantastic so far. Big props to Janine for putting everything together.
00:00:28
Heather Roberts
We are recording this live for our listeners who are watching this later. We are recording this live at TNT and we've never done this before. So bear with us for any technical difficulties, like no intro music, but it's all right. You get us instead. um So something that we do here, and I said this to the audience first, but saying it again now is that we break down legal cases or issues in the publishing world. um Again, Veronica and I are both licensed attorneys, but we're never your attorneys. None of this is legal advice, just our take on legal cases in the industry.
00:01:07
Heather Roberts
That's my little disclaimer there.
The 'Shy Girl' Case Overview
00:01:09
Heather Roberts
So today we're going to talk about one case that literally just happened. You may have heard about the book called Shy Girl. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got some people in the audience who are aware of Shy Girl. Yeah. Shy Girl by Mia Ballard.
00:01:26
Heather Roberts
So basic facts for those that don't know. um I'm going to be pulling a lot of these. There's a YouTube channel called The Dre Dossier. So if you really want a super deep dive, she does a great job of it. This is not that. This is not that super deep dive. But I pulled a lot of facts from her because she cited all of her sources. And we love that. We love we love someone who cites their sources. Um, so Mia Ballard, she wrote a horror novel titled Shy Girl. Okay. She published it in February, 2025 as an indie book, as a lot of people, you know, you guys do as well. So she, interestingly, before this controversy happened, she actually had a controversy before this issue. Okay. Okay. So she had taken a photo from Pinterest.
00:02:13
Heather Roberts
We know this is a no a no-no, but she didn't. She took a photo from Pinterest and made it her book cover. um And I don't know if it was the exact photo or if it was heavily inspired by, but that photo was actually...
00:02:31
Heather Roberts
a fairly well-known artist made it, even if it wasn't a fairly well-known artist artist, don't, don't do that. That's yeah. Don't do that. Um, so they found out about it. They sent a demand letter to her, uh, you know, basically saying, I need, we're going to sue you. Um, I need to know your royalties and so I need compensation for the art that you stole from me. And, uh, that is still,
00:02:58
Heather Roberts
unresolved as far as I'm aware. Yes, I don't think that that case has been fully concluded or that there's been a yeah sort of settlement yet. But in the meantime, so that was all
Controversy and TikTok Influence
00:03:08
Heather Roberts
happening. This book then starts taking off in the horror world and ah TikTok found Shy Girl and she was then offered a deal from Hachette.
00:03:20
Heather Roberts
to publish it traditionally, which is many, many authors' dreams, right? You publish a book and then traditional publishing comes in, says, we want to publish it, distribute it, all of that good noise. So Hachette was well aware of this book cover issue. So it's not like they went into it blind knowing that there was some controversy, but they were also going to recover the book. So they didn't really, that was her problem, I'm sure, is what they were like. This is a you problem. Um,
00:03:49
Heather Roberts
So they do a contract with her and they offered, you know, offered her a deal. She took it. As far as I know, she did not have an agent for this deal. And I say this not to be like, you have to have an agent for everything. I mean, we're we're agents, so I'm i'm biased. But at the same time, she also maybe didn't have as many protections in the contracts that she could have had. a Traditionally published novel, traditional book deal contracts are very, very heavily weighted towards the publisher.
00:04:25
Heather Roberts
Like, just their standard contract is incredibly weighted to the publisher. Even final contracts are still heavily weighted towards the publisher. There are certain things that you can negotiate that help make it a little bit more author friendly. But it's really interesting that this industry is one where it is still very much in favor of the publisher who is usually the initial drafter of the contract. So it's just, it's a a strange industry quirk that we have here. But for an author who obviously does not know all the ins and outs of the industry, if she's pulling stuff from Pinterest, to then sign this deal without having an agent or potentially anybody to otherwise advise her, maybe not the best decision. yeah
00:05:11
Heather Roberts
Totally debut as a novelist. She had written some poetry. um She was a poet and had published that way, but this was her first full-length novel, and she had no experience in the business side of things at all.
00:05:23
Heather Roberts
Right. So this book going viral, she gets a deal, um and then it was supposed to be released in May of this year. Right. However, however, this is now the controversy some of you have heard
AI Accusations and Contract Cancellation
00:05:36
Heather Roberts
about. In January of this year, a YouTuber, a creator called Frankie Shelf posted a two hour and 40 minute video titled, I'm pretty sure this book is ai slop.
00:05:50
Heather Roberts
Yeah. ah And in all caps in the description, it was, this is just my opinion with like a million exclamation points. He was it wass definitely, but he felt strongly about it because it was two hours and 40 minutes long. And this was about Shy Girl. So at the same time, a redit that Reddit thread said,
00:06:09
Heather Roberts
was put out from someone who claimed to be a book editor that asked if anyone thought Shy Girl was written by ChatGPT. And the Redditor went through at least a portion of the book line by line and gave reasons why they thought it was AI. Okay. So both of these posts then also went viral. Like we're talking like 2 million people plus viral for each of the posts.
00:06:33
Heather Roberts
Then Max Spiro, the CEO of an AI detection company, what is it, Pangram? Yes, yes, Max runs Pangram. He decided to run the manuscript through his AI detector, mind you.
00:06:49
Heather Roberts
Okay, we're taking a pause here. Okay. Veronica, what what manuscript did he have to throw in He pulled a pirated version, a PDF off of a pirate site and ran it through his AI detection software.
00:07:01
Heather Roberts
Yes. yeah That tracks, right? He did not take the manuscript from Hachette. He took it off the internet where someone else had uploaded it stolen. So we don't know what version of the manuscript was uploaded, right? And we don't know. There's a pirated version of the manuscript. He puts it through his a AI detection software, and it comes out 78% AI, okay?
00:07:23
Heather Roberts
And he posts this onto social media. So the New York Times then becomes involved, and they decide to do their investigative reporting, which...
00:07:34
Heather Roberts
I've seen their investigative reporting before, and I'm not always impressed, okay? New York Times. It is not the deep dive that you would hope it would be, yeah okay? um So they did an investigation and wrote a story about how the book was AI-generated.
00:07:54
Heather Roberts
Within 24 hours of the article posting, Hachette canceled the book and the contract and issued a statement saying how much they value human creators, which we value human creators, right? Like that is not the issue here. um They claim that after the New York Times reached out to them that they did their own return internal review.
00:08:18
Heather Roberts
in 24 hours, okay, um and decided to cancel it, relying on two pieces of information that the New York Times presented to them, okay? One is the Max Spiro AI detector, right? And the second one is Thad McElroy.
00:08:35
Heather Roberts
you're like, who's Thad McElroy? Because that's what I said. Thad McElroy is an author, consultant, and expert witness specializing in artificial intelligence, marketing, and social media. He's an attorney that has positioned himself as an expert in this field, and he often gets called in now to testify in court as an expert witness regarding AI, social media, book publishing in the industry.
00:09:01
Heather Roberts
So McElroy learned about these allegations through an employee of Pan Graham. Yes. He got his own copy of the book, We Don't Know From Where, and he ran it through GPT-0 and Originality.ai.
00:09:19
Heather Roberts
And those are also AI detection softwares, okay? Those also said that the text was largely or partly AI-generated. So matt Mia, you know, the author, has since responded and released a statement to the New York Times. She wrote some a statement to the New York Times and stated that she did not use AI to write the book.
00:09:40
Heather Roberts
However, an acquaintance, this is the interesting wording, an acquaintance that she had hired to edit the self-published version had used it without her knowledge, maybe.
00:09:54
Heather Roberts
um And she, I mean, that's not her exact words. She does. but But the summary of it is, yeah I didn't use AI to write the
AI Detection Issues and Bias Concerns
00:10:01
Heather Roberts
manuscript, but the person I paid to edit it might have used ChatGPT to edit it.
00:10:05
Heather Roberts
Without her knowledge. And she claims that she's pursuing legal action and thus she can't say more. So this is the situation that we're in now with those are the facts. And we have a lot of issues with a lot of it.
00:10:19
Heather Roberts
OK, number one, as an attorney, don't ever potentially admit fault. Don't do that. Seriously, let's start there, right? Don't just What are you doing? I didn't do it, but the person next to me who I paid some money might have.
00:10:36
Heather Roberts
That, that as as ah as an attorney who would maybe potentially get that case, right, I'm looking at that and saying, oh, oh, why did you do that? Why? Don't. don't Keep your mouth shut. yeah Hire somebody to write the statement for you, okay, if you get caught up in a situation like this. Because she doesn't actually know if the editor that she hired used ChatGPT. Maybe it was Grammarly. I don't know the conversation that she had with that person, right? But Grammarly has ai components in their software. almost fully AI-powered now. So if you use Grammarly to proof your own writing, you're...
00:11:12
Heather Roberts
letting AI touch it. I mean, and is it generative AI? Is it, is it just, you know, fixing typos? What level of ai are we talking about? How much was the AI, if it was used, used in the manuscript? There's so many levels of facts here that we don't know that her putting that out was really damning and a terrible idea. But do you know what my bigger problem with this is? There's a lot. Go ahead.
00:11:38
Heather Roberts
but Where was Hachette through all of this? They've had the manuscript. They've had the ability to run it through their own detection software or to do this on the back end before. This book was published in the yeah UK in November of last year, y'all. like It was already out. It was being distributed in the UK. The US release date was supposed to be May of this year. Yes.
00:11:57
Heather Roberts
Why didn't they nip this in the bud before someone else privately came along and did it and went viral talking about it? Correct. And using it for engagement and clicks. And also, if Mia didn't use AI to write the book, there's ways to prove that, right? Like you have metadata. You have the ability to pull the manuscript, right, and submit that and show where you physically typed it. Like they can run it now and you can see the metadata and see that it wasn't, AI wasn't used. Right. um But there's a lot of issues with the Hachette handling of this. I personally feel that it was done way too quickly. Like, the New York Times came to them and said, this is these are our this is our evidence. And within 24 hours, they canceled the book deal. That, to me, does not say deep investigation. Right. Screams, knee jerk, damage control reaction to me. Correct. And while that is understandable, because we are living in a time where AI is very controversial and we're not here sitting here saying like, that's okay, because it's not, right? Like we are all about human creators. We're all about writing. But the facts of this case don't really dictate them pulling a contract so quickly. Right.
00:13:15
Heather Roberts
Yeah. Well, anyone could now be accused of using AI. And as long as one detection software says there's a possibility, you're now on the defensive trying to prove that you're innocent against these accusations that say you're guilty.
00:13:30
Heather Roberts
Well, and let's talk about the AI detection software. Shall we? We shall. We we have access to some really old manuscripts that were written 10 plus years ago. And I took a section of- Veronica. Yes. I used to write as a hobby. I no longer do that. I've never published. But I took one of my old manuscripts from 2016.
00:13:48
Heather Roberts
clipped about 12,000 words and put it into ah the three all three that were used in this case. Two of them said 100% human creation. The third one said that my manuscript from 2016 was 35% AI generated.
00:14:03
Heather Roberts
So? Back before large language models were even available. There's no way I could have used ai for that in 2016. So that's concerning. Yeah. but So that means anybody, and also don't do this with other people's work, right? But anybody could take your work, run it through an AI detection software, and if it, just run it through one, and if it pops up 35%, oh, it's AI. When you literally, that's very concerning.
00:14:32
Heather Roberts
The implications of that, I don't like at all. Right. Well, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because we use our language, the the programmers and the coders use our language, and the books that are stolen to train these models are also written by all of us in our conversational language. Right. And AI is learning how we talk to each other and how we write.
00:14:53
Heather Roberts
And we are also incorporating the AI-generated stuff on the internet into our language every day. And so around and around we go. yeah The models get better and better at sounding like us.
00:15:04
Heather Roberts
And we sound a little bit more like them. And it's hard to know where AI starts and where human creation comes into play, right? Right. And I think we've all seen them. It's very clear the books on Amazon that are AI slop. We've seen them. We've we've read a couple, you know. We can't even really call them books, right? Yeah, right. It's like, you know word salad. But there are definitely titles that I'm sure are out there that authors have, I'm sure, used AI. Yeah. that you would never know or that are being accused of AI that are absolutely aren't. Right. Because again, where did AI learn how to write from from all the authors, from all the books that were stolen and plugged into their language machine? So yeah, as Veronica said, it's a terrible cycle.
00:15:55
Heather Roberts
And there's going to be these witch hunts going around. And this is just an example of one. And you can just see the knee jerk reaction from a publisher that has really not investigated this fully in any stretch of the imagination, ah you know just pulling a contract that is theoretically lucrative. Yeah.
00:16:16
Heather Roberts
Yeah. ah Well, and they have done studies on these AI detection programs. And they're completely fallible when it comes to finding or calling out what they suspect is ai in certain populations. A person who is writing in English, but English is not their native first language, they are more likely to be ah signaled or or set apart as having written with the help of ai than someone who is a native English speaker and writer. I believe ah African-American English also gets flagged as AI generated more often. And people who are neurodivergent are more often flagged as having used AI in their writing, especially folks who are autistic.
00:17:01
Heather Roberts
so And Mia Ballard, for the record, is a black author. Yes, she is a woman of color. She's a woman of color. So did that have anything to do with it, with her, you know, Her usual vernacular that she writes in, maybe that is more likely to be
Protecting Authors from AI Accusations
00:17:16
Heather Roberts
deemed AI. And we don't know. She may be neurodivergent as well. I mean, there is are so many different factors here.
00:17:21
Heather Roberts
So it's a lot to consider. And I know we're not trying to, like, fear monger here. But these are issues that are going to be popping up in the industry. This is not going be not the first time. This is not going to be the last time. yeah But you need to think about ways that you can protect yourself as an author if these things come up. Again, number one thing, never admit faults. Do not put out a public statement without talking to somebody, okay? Don't do that.
00:17:49
Heather Roberts
That's silly. um and Talk to a lawyer, okay? Yeah. ah and Document everything. If you write on Google Docs, if you write on Word, make sure you have backups of the original manuscripts, right? Because a lot of times you might input that into Vellum or something like that. Metadata might be lost. So make sure that you have that original manuscript that you wrote in because that's going to be able to tell you know, that you did updates here, you did this thing. Yeah, if you if your editor or your proofreaders or your alpha readers or your beta readers are leaving you notes in a Word doc or a Google doc or any, you know, any a pages doc, save those and then edit from a separate version of it and incorporate those changes. Yeah, absolutely. That way you have all of your records about every every person who's touched and what the suggestions were to in the editing and proofreading processes. Absolutely. And so that's something that can help you if you ever are accused of this and it goes to through a legal process that will matter at the end of the day. ye
00:18:51
Heather Roberts
Who has exposure in this situation? Most certainly the book editor, right? Huge. Huge exposure. So make sure that you're vetting your book editor. Make sure that you're working with people that you trust, that you have had that you have contracts with that specifically say that you do not approve of the use of AI in their editing. What do you use? Find out what they're using and make sure that everything is done appropriately. You have a business. that As an author, you are a business. So you need to make sure that you're protecting yourself as a business would. If you're going into a book deal, make sure that you are properly represented or maybe hire an attorney to look at the
Legal Implications and Contractual Concerns
00:19:34
Heather Roberts
yeah contract. You don't necessarily need a literary agent, but get a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property.
00:19:39
Heather Roberts
And make sure that you're protected from that end as well. Because again, it's going to be heavily weighted towards the publisher. but there are certain things that you can do to help make it a little more fair to you. And we don't know what this Hachette deal says. We don't know what the contract terms are.
00:19:55
Heather Roberts
um I've seen contract terms from Hachette, but i don't know if they had that that language in there about AI specifically. Right. um And this one could have. so But if it is found out that she, in fact, did not use AI and that the AI use of the editor...
00:20:16
Heather Roberts
wasn't significant, I would certainly say that Hachette is legally exposed here. Bigly, depending on the specific terms of the contract. Yeah. I mean, this is huge. Yeah. um and And what does it take for an accusation to really be credible, too? Because let's go back to the idea that a stolen copy of the manuscript was the first one run through one of these detection softwares.
00:20:40
Heather Roberts
I mean... Who touched that PDF? Who did what to it? And it has a it has a tag on it with the pirate website on every single page. How many times did that appear in the detection software's reading of this being some sort of AI product? Right.
00:21:00
Heather Roberts
so So these things all matter. and I think we're going to end it there simply because we are running low on time.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:21:08
Heather Roberts
But These are all things to think about. And if you want more information like this, come to For Book's Sake.
00:21:15
Heather Roberts
Check out our podcast. We are wherever podcast podcasts. You can also watch us on YouTube if you want to see our beautiful faces. And check us out. We have more cases like this that we talk about. And we next one, we are going to be doing an update on the Crave lawsuit. Yes. We did our own two-hour breakdown video. Yes, i did. On the Crave lawsuit. And I'm pleased to say that There's an order in from the court. Yeah.
00:21:43
Heather Roberts
We didn't do too bad in our prognostication. Sure didn't. There might be a lot of self-congratulations in this next episode. We will be insufferable the next time we record. But check that out. um I think it's going really interesting. for sure. Thank you guys so much.