Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting

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In headline after headline this year, American book publishers have appeared to be fighting back against generative AI, from suing Google for copyright infringement to canceling books by authors suspected of using LLMs.

今年，美国图书出版商在各大头条新闻中似乎一直在抵制生成式人工智能，从起诉谷歌侵犯版权，到取消那些被怀疑使用大语言模型（LLM）的作者的出版合同。

But behind the scenes, at least three of the Big Five US book publishers—HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette—have been quietly incorporating AI tools into their publishing processes without public disclosures or author consent.

但在幕后，美国五大出版商中的至少三家——哈珀柯林斯（HarperCollins）、西蒙与舒斯特（Simon & Schuster）和阿歇特（Hachette）——一直在悄悄地将人工智能工具整合到其出版流程中，且未进行公开披露或征得作者同意。

According to interviews with more than two dozen workers, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their employment, publishers are now using LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT to email literary agents, write publicity and back-cover copy, design cover art, and generate marketing materials, often at the direction of their executives.

根据对二十多名员工的采访（他们均要求匿名以避免影响工作），出版商目前正在高管的指示下，使用 Claude 和 ChatGPT 等大语言模型来给文学代理人发送邮件、撰写宣传文案和封底简介、设计封面艺术，并生成营销材料。

At the same time, multiple editorial staffers say the widely publicized cases of authors accused of using LLMs to help write their books—like Hachette’s horror novel Shy Girl or Macmillan’s crime thriller Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body—are just the tip of the iceberg. “Every single imprint has a story of someone very esteemed who had a book canceled because of blatant AI use” without ever making the news, one editor says.

与此同时，多名编辑人员表示，那些广为人知的作者被指控使用大语言模型辅助写作的案例——例如阿歇特的恐怖小说《害羞女孩》（Shy Girl）或麦克米伦的犯罪惊悚小说《叫我，我会藏好尸体》（Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body）——仅仅是冰山一角。一位编辑说：“每个出版品牌都有关于某位备受尊敬的作者因公然使用人工智能而被取消出版合同的故事”，只是这些事从未见诸报端。

At HarperCollins senior leaders purchased Claude licenses from Anthropic months ago “but very quickly realized they didn’t know how to implement them,” according to a current employee. Dozens of junior- and senior-level staff were then “voluntold” to become “AI Champions” and were tasked with discovering use cases in monthly brainstorming sessions with staff across the company.

据一名现任员工透露，哈珀柯林斯的高层几个月前购买了 Anthropic 公司的 Claude 许可，但“很快意识到他们不知道该如何实施”。随后，数十名初级和高级员工被“自愿指派”成为“人工智能倡导者”，任务是在全公司的月度头脑风暴会议中探索应用场景。

This spring, when some HarperCollins employees expressed concerns about the legal, ethical, and environmental impacts of AI at one of these brainstorming sessions, a person leading the meeting dismissed their qualms as “the cost of doing business,” according to someone who attended the meeting. Soon after, a statement was added to the new AI section of the HarperCollins online employee portal, noting that “while AI does have an environmental impact, it’s a small part of most individuals’ total digital carbon footprint.”

今年春天，在一次头脑风暴会议上，当一些哈珀柯林斯员工对人工智能在法律、道德和环境方面的影响表示担忧时，据一位与会者称，会议负责人将他们的顾虑斥为“做生意的代价”。不久之后，哈珀柯林斯在线员工门户网站新增的人工智能板块中加入了一份声明，指出“虽然人工智能确实会对环境产生影响，但它在大多数个人的数字碳足迹中仅占很小一部分”。

Some HarperCollins staffers were unnerved by the brainstorming sessions. “It was such a slap in the face,” says one employee. “We’ve been making valid business cases for years to be paid a healthy salary, and instead they spent that money on software that most of us don’t really want.” (The average entry-level salary for New York City publishing employees at the Big Five and Scholastic was $47,583 in 2023.) In addition to Claude, staffers say HarperCollins has also purchased licenses for ChatGPT and Jasper, an agentic platform that promises “to run end-to-end marketing workflows.”

一些哈珀柯林斯的员工对这些头脑风暴会议感到不安。“这简直是打脸，”一名员工说，“多年来我们一直在提出合理的商业理由要求获得合理的薪水，结果他们却把钱花在了我们大多数人并不想要的软件上。”（2023年，纽约市五大出版商和学乐集团的入门级出版员工平均工资为47,583美元。）员工们表示，除了 Claude，哈珀柯林斯还购买了 ChatGPT 和 Jasper 的许可，后者是一个承诺“运行端到端营销工作流”的代理平台。

At least one HarperCollins division has been “all in” on AI since gaining software licenses, according to one staffer, including AI-generated marketing videos. But according to workers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, one of the most common use cases for LLMs so far is generating publicity copy.

据一名员工称，至少有一个哈珀柯林斯的部门在获得软件许可后对人工智能“全力以赴”，包括制作人工智能生成的营销视频。但据哈珀柯林斯、西蒙与舒斯特和阿歇特的员工称，目前大语言模型最常见的用途之一是生成宣传文案。

Readers encounter publicity copy everywhere from Amazon and Goodreads to back covers, and it’s used to pitch books to booksellers, journalists, content creators, and critics. However, “using AI to generate publicity copy is short-sighted,” a Big Five publicist tells me. “Publicists have a duty to engage in good faith with readers and our colleagues in the media, who I’m sure have a low threshold for tolerating AI-generated pitches.”

读者在亚马逊、Goodreads 以及书籍封底等各处都能看到宣传文案，这些文案也被用于向书商、记者、内容创作者和评论家推介书籍。然而，一位五大出版商的宣传人员告诉我：“使用人工智能生成宣传文案是短视的。宣传人员有责任与读者以及媒体同行进行真诚的互动，我相信他们对人工智能生成的推介内容的容忍度很低。”

On the other hand, Meg Reid, publisher of the independent Hub City Press, says LLM-written marketing and publicity unfortunately “feels pretty inevitable” for the Big Five. “That’s one place we’re probably going to see a bigger shift between corporate publishers looking for efficiencies and smaller publishers insisting that the humans involved are the whole point.”

另一方面，独立出版社 Hub City Press 的出版人梅格·里德（Meg Reid）表示，对于五大出版商来说，使用大语言模型撰写营销和宣传内容不幸地“感觉相当不可避免”。“这可能是我们看到企业出版商追求效率与小型出版商坚持‘以人为本’之间出现更大分歧的一个领域。”

Meanwhile, earlier this year, literary agents began suspecting specific Big Five editors were using AI to write rejection letters. “Among colleagues, we compared emails on different books from the same editors, and they all had the same classic signs of AI writing, like ‘not this, but that’ and the rule of three,” one agent says. Employees at Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Hachette tell WIRED they believe the agents’ suspicions were correct.

与此同时，今年早些时候，文学代理人开始怀疑五大出版商的某些编辑正在使用人工智能撰写拒稿信。一位代理人说：“在同行之间，我们对比了同一位编辑针对不同书籍发来的邮件，它们都有人工智能写作的典型特征，比如‘不是这个，而是那个’以及‘三段论’。”西蒙与舒斯特、哈珀柯林斯和阿歇特的员工告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志，他们认为代理人的怀疑是正确的。

A spokesperson for Hachette says the company “support[s] the use of AI tools for operational purposes, when they help our authors’ books reach more readers,” but that it “[does] not support creative uses of AI, including communicating with our authors and partners.”

阿歇特的一位发言人表示，公司“支持在运营目的下使用人工智能工具，前提是它们能帮助我们作者的书籍触达更多读者”，但公司“不支持人工智能的创造性用途，包括与我们的作者和合作伙伴进行沟通”。

Wibke Grutjen, global chief marketing and communications officer at Simon & Schuster, says “employees across all functions have access to a limited number of enterprise-level AI tools,” but using them is not mandatory. Grutjen said the company prohibits the use of any AI tool “that has not been vetted and approved” and that “the goal is always to free up more time for our employees to spend on deeper focus and creative work on behalf of and alongside our authors.”

西蒙与舒斯特的全球营销与传播首席官维布克·格鲁琴（Wibke Grutjen）表示，“所有职能部门的员工都可以访问有限数量的企业级人工智能工具”，但使用它们并非强制性的。格鲁琴称，公司禁止使用任何“未经审查和批准”的人工智能工具，并表示“我们的目标始终是为员工腾出更多时间，让他们能够代表作者并与作者并肩进行更深入的专注和创造性工作”。

HarperCollins did not respond to requests for comment.

哈珀柯林斯未回应置评请求。

Months ago, workers at Simon & Schuster attended a workshop with representatives from OpenAI. “The person leading the workshop genuinely had no idea what we did,” an attendee says, but one of the AI company’s recommendations for how to use ChatGPT in the book trade was, in fact, composing emails to literary agents. The practice has also grown among editors at HarperCollins and Hachette, employees say.

几个月前，西蒙与舒斯特的员工参加了由 OpenAI 代表主持的研讨会。一位与会者说：“主持研讨会的人根本不知道我们是做什么的。”但该人工智能公司关于如何在图书贸易中使用 ChatGPT 的建议之一，竟然就是撰写给文学代理人的邮件。员工们表示，这种做法在哈珀柯林斯和阿歇特的编辑中也已变得普遍。

In May 2024, staffers say Simon & Schuster held a contest among employees to come up with the best use cases for AI, with a $10,000 prize for the winner and $5,000 each for two runners-up. Since then, the company has “rolled back some of the AI-pushing because employees kept complaining about it in town halls,” says one employee. According to several staffers, AI assets are also cropping up in cover art, with some foreign presses distributed by Simon & Schuster openly acknowl

2024年5月，员工们表示西蒙与舒斯特在内部举办了一场竞赛，旨在寻找人工智能的最佳应用场景，冠军奖金为1万美元，两名亚军各获得5000美元。一位员工称，自那以后，公司“缩减了一些对人工智能的推动，因为员工们在市政厅会议上不断对此表示抱怨”。据几位员工透露，人工智能生成的素材也开始出现在封面艺术中，一些由西蒙与舒斯特发行的外国出版社也公开承认了这一点。