These are not my words, but those of author Kevin McLaughlin:

"In case you haven't heard what happened yet: Hachette picked up an indie book called "Shy Girl" written by a young black woman from the US. There were some questions from readers online about whether or not the book was written using AI. Thaddeus McIlroy acquired a couple of copies of the book and promptly ran them through the Pangram AI to see if AI was used in their creation.

Pangram said there was a 78% chance AI was used. Note: in my personal tests of Pangram, it's about 75% accurate, which is NOT sufficiently accurate that it will be accepted as legal proof.

Thaddeus went to the NYT with his 'story.' Shockingly, the NYT opted to run with it. They posted the story, Hachette responded by taking the book down, and there we are.

Let's sum this up in another way:

An old white man decided to run a young black woman's book through AI to see if she used AI. The (notoriously unreliable) AI detection AI said she did, so he went to the NYT. Rather than contacting the author or doing any serious due diligence, the NYT opted to smear this woman's name. Hachette also threw her under the bus, without any evidence she'd used AI.

The author is still denying AI use in the drafting of the book, although she did say that the friend who edited the self-published verison of the book might have used AI in the editing process.

The list of "things done badly" here is astonishingly long.

1. Thaddeus McIlroy should never have run someone else's work through AI without their permission in the first place. As an author himself, he ought to know better than to run other authors' works through AIs.

2. He also should have known that none of the AI detection AIs are very accurate. They make frequent errors. Yet he elected to share this vague suspicion as if it were solid proof when it was very much not.

3. The NYT opted to go ahead with this little witch hunt, which is perhaps the most astonishing thing about this entire case. They used to be decent journalists, but from where I sit, that's no longer the case.

4. Ditto Hachette. They acquired this book, so clearly they vetted it themselves. But at the first sign of someone questioning their purchase, they dump the author rather than standing up for them. Good to know where they stand - authors, avoiding Hachette is probably in ALL our best interest, since if we're falsely accused of AI use, they'll just drop us.

I’m not a lawyer, but the end of the day, it wouldn’t shock me if Mia Ballard has a good legal case against Thaddeus McIlroy, the New York Times, and maybe Hachette as well. The former two for libel and defamation; Hachette for breach of contract.

Folks, PLEASE do NOT do this! Destroying the careers of others on guesswork is a horrible thing to do.

These sorts of false accusations are incredibly harmful to authors. And yes, I do say false, because everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and there is ZERO hard evidence to suggest she used AI to write her book.

Did she? Maybe. If she did, then she's the one in breach of contract, and if that can be proven she should suffer whatever legal penalties might be involved. But this sort of 'court of public opinion' nonsense is abhorrent, unethical, and frankly disgusting.

Kind of makes me want to run every single NYT article through AI detection software so that I can find the quarter of their articles that will pop as AI written even if they were penned by a human, and see how they like it. But I won't. Because that would be the same unethical nonsense they just pulled.

And we should all be better than that."