CBC News
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The label is nothing if not timely. Weeks ago, the North American publishing industry was rocked when a New York Times story accused horror writer Mia Ballard of using generative artificial intelligence to write her novel Shy Girl.
The Times presented evidence compelling enough for Ballard's publisher, Hachette, to cancel the book's U.S. and U.K. release entirely. Ballard denied using AI to write the novel but said it was possible an editor she'd worked with on the self-published version might have.
The scandal divided the industry. Some accepted the accusation — and Hachette's response — as truth. Others felt the punishment was prejudicial, since AI-detection software like the kind used to evaluate Ballard's writing tends to be imperfect.
The incident, which Ballard says has ruined her career, demonstrates the conundrum that literary professionals face as they comb through every pitch, query letter and manuscript lobbed their way: How do you separate the proverbial wheat from the AI-generated chaff, and what happens if you get it wrong?
"I really would have preferred to see her publisher stand up for her and stand behind the work themselves because they trusted their own process," Degen said. "I mean, the best AI detector in the world — the best detector of bad writing — is a good editorial process."
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Later on, they interview the Kobo CEO:
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A similar surge of AI-generated writing has put Canadian e-book company Kobo "on the receiving end of a firehose," CEO Michael Tamblyn said during a recent interview.
In addition to selling e-readers, Kobo holds millions of e-book titles in an online library and hosts a self-publishing platform for authors called Kobo Writing Life. It's through this channel that the company is noticing a stark shift.
The company rejected nearly 45 per cent of the books submitted to its self-publishing program in 2025. About 80 per cent were rejected because Kobo suspected they were largely or entirely AI-generated, which would have "barely been a factor" in previous years, according to Tamblyn.
"We are receiving increasing amounts of content that, as far as we can see, is likely being either largely AI-generated, partially AI-generated or entirely AI-generated," Tamblyn explained. "And that's coming in through the same conduit that regular authors are using to get their books out."
Bowker, the leading information agency for the U.S. books industry, recently released data that showed the number of self-published ISBNs for fiction titles rose sharply between 2024 and 2025 — from 306,781 to 477,104 books.
A spokesperson told CBC News it might be reasonable to assume, but not prove, that AI tools made it easier for creators to publish their stories.
Kobo is focused on rooting out the most egregiously AI-generated works from its self-publication platform (like a book that aggregated 10,000 apple pie recipes from across the internet). But it hasn't been easy to develop a broader set of guardrails because the technology can be applied in different ways, Tamblyn acknowledged.
"Do people want to know whether the books are human written or not? And how do you go about that process of flagging or asking authors to certify or asking publishers to certify?" he said. "That is far from being a settled issue right now."
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