PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Hollywood Book Rights Deal Is Disrupted By AI Allegations
Ungenerating a book deal // Image by Kait Cunniff with DALL-E
An international bidding war for the hot new book Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body quickly cooled over allegations that it was written largely with AI.
The Big Picture: As AI use seeps deeper into culture and gets better at writing, it’s no surprise that some people are using it to write books or screenplays and pass them off as their own. But the legal and labor issues surrounding these systems are a tightrope no company wants to walk.
Behind The Scenes: An unpublished crime novel by first-time author Jerry Falade was on track to become the biggest book deal of the year.
Minotaur Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, paid $2.4 million for the book and a sequel.
International publishers started bidding on the rights, as did Hollywood studios looking to make a film adaptation.
While the author has maintained he didn’t use AI, the book apparently raised enough red flags among AI detection tools that everyone got cold feet.
Suddenly, Europa Content (which was selling the book rights) and UTA (which was selling the film rights) stepped away from the manuscript.
Closing Thoughts: The issue stems from the fact that AI-generated writing is generally not copyrightable because public AI systems are trained on previously copyrighted works. No copyright means no protections… which is something any company wants to secure before handing over millions of dollars.
Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding, and Falade will be able to move forward with a deal. If not, it’ll serve as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to pass off AI-assisted writing in professional literary circles.
Coming (Not) Soon: Expect the publishing world — especially Minotaur and Macmillan — to pursue cutting-edge AI detection tools so nothing like this happens again.
Together with 1440 Media
All Your News, None Of The Bias
Every day, the 1440 team of editors hand-selects and summarizes the most important stories from over 100 trusted sources.
The result? A 5-minute newsletter that’s fast, factual, and refreshingly human.
No bots. No bias. Just clear, comprehensive news on politics, business, and culture — trusted by over 4M readers and always free.
Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.