当下曼哈顿麦克米兰出版社总部的工作人员于2024年1月1日上午上班时，他们在墙上呈递了奇怪的东西——飞行者欢迎一位名叫“NOA”的小组新成员。 据在场的几位工人说，食堂被放出紫色气球和横幅并用诺阿的名字用轻快的马克字母命名。 一盘满是甜甜圈
NOA是无普通助理的缩写，许多Macmillan的人力助理发现，在发给工作人员的电子邮件中，NOA是推出，是德国软件公司Chaptr开发的AI聊天机器人，由麦克米兰的母公司Holtzbrinck " 支持".
电子邮件还保证雇员NOA是“一个安全的环境，你可以输入专有信息，而不必与任何第三方分享这些数据。” 从理论上讲，这意味着NOA是一个不保留或共享模型培训数据的闭路企业工具。
Macmillan工作人员说，他们在训练课程中被警告，NOA可能会产生幻觉，并且总是需要由人类检查事实。 然而，雇员们说，他们被鼓励使用NOA来制作电子邮件，起草副本，进行营销研究并产生想法。 许多工作人员说，他们被告知 " 只 " 将提交人的手稿 " 百分比 " 粘入NOA。 员工也可以调整NOA的语气，包括“轻心 ”、 “spartan ”、 “悲观 ”、 “sarcast” 和 “ regretable ”。
一位Macmillan雇员回忆说，一位Chaptr的代表在一次早期的面对面培训中向工人们保证，Chaptr知道出版商正在处理一些非常重要的内容。 “我还以为我们是在出版文献，”这位雇员称。
2024年后期，麦克米兰员工被鼓励使用NOA来为业绩审查产生目标。 “我们为诺阿为你们写目标建立了一个专门的提示！”
一些麦克米兰员工表示NOA是无益和不可靠的。 “这是可怕的，没有人使用，”一个称。 WIRED为这篇文章与多名出版雇员进行了交谈，其中包括一些已经离开雇主的雇员。 WIRED没有给这些雇员点名，也没有给与我们面谈的作者点名，因为他们担心职业影响。
2025年10月，麦克米兰工作人员通过全公司的电子邮件得知查普特会让NOA发作。 此后工人表示，领导层一直试图将Google Gemini纳入出版过程。 一些工作人员后来试验使用Gemini来评价文学家agents的提交书信，但Gemini产生的评价是"无用的"，据一位编辑说。
WIRED的通讯和社区副总裁Kelly Collins在回应WIRED的征求意见请求时，称出版社使用Gemini进行"业务"，但"Macmillan领导人没有指示将Gemini用于出版过程的任何部分，包括评价agents的提交信". 她还说，称“分享的要点不能准确地反映NOA是如何推出和传达的”，但当WIRED问到哪些方面不准确时，她没有提供进一步的说明。
Collins 指出认为公司“对AI采取深思熟虑的方法，注重雇员的认识和教育，同时始终保持人们的前沿和中心地位。”
Macmilan通常被指为"美国五大书刊"中根据每年售出书籍数量而最小的。 它的印记法拉，施特劳斯和吉鲁克出版文学小说"重量级"，如"莎莉·鲁尼"(Sally Rooney),"李一云"(Yiyun Li)和"本·勒纳"(Ben Lerner)等；而"托克·布克"(Tor Books)则是科幻和幻想作家约翰·斯卡尔齐(John Scalzi),"玛莎·威尔斯"(Martha Wells)和"恩内迪·奥科拉福"(Nnedi Okorafor)的家。
自从我第一次报道AI在出版界的蠕动后，我从所有五大公司的工作人员那里听到，他们声称高管正在逼迫他们使用AI工具
并正在考虑完全放弃传统出版方式。
在企鹅随机之家(Penguin Random House,Penguin Books and Random House)是继2013年企鹅图书公司和随机之家合并之后
2月，Hay House——2023年Penguin Random House的一个新时代自助出版商收购——的代表向一些PRH雇员介绍了ChatGPT企业如何成为 " 核心生产力、创造力和合作工具 "，因为他们一年前就采用了这一工具。 甲板上的四个投资回报支柱之一是“创造力 ”，包括“理想的生成、内容的开发以及讲故事的创新 ”。
所有PRH工人WIRED都表示，尽可能避免ChatGPT。 一名雇员称，其他工作人员说，他们的管理人员明确要求他们不要使用AI从事广告副本和封面设计等创造性任务，这造成了一些混乱。
称 Claire von Schilling，执行副总裁兼出版商通讯和社会责任总监，“我们正在探讨如何在明确原则和保障的指导下适当支持我们的工作，包括保护作者和公司的知识产权，并维护人类创造性和判断力在出版中的重要作用。”
Von Schilling 也认为PRH的"出版团体和印记有自由裁量权来确定AI工具是否和如何适合特定的工作流程，包括市场营销，宣传和设计等领域".
同时，几位畅销的"五大"作者表示，他们与出版商的关系在过去一年中由于AI的使用而受到影响。 综合起来，与"大五"作者WIRED的谈话已经售出超过3000万份。 一位畅销书作者称收到营销副本，其中包含他们书中由AI-hallucced引出的内容，但出版商坚称它们并非AI所生成。 提交人称说，“我被毒气吞噬了。” 在最近一轮的合同谈判中，另一位最畅销的作者称无法让一家"五大"出版商保证不会在他们的书上以任何方式使用AI.
一位作者称表示，“这正在破坏作家和出版商之间必须存在的必要的信任感。
”另一位作者称说：“他们感觉像是在河槽两边吃东西。”
作者说"大五"的裁员成本削减导致编辑条件恶化并迫使一些人接受AI求生。 “我们看到编辑完全不读材料，其他作者和agents表示，他们被编辑们要求自己编写修改计划
所有与我交谈的作者都说，他们希望出版商能够沟通他们使用AI的时间和方式。 一位作者称指出，另一个希望是五大国“会聚在一起，围绕大赦国际提出一套原则，他们打算遵守这些原则。” 但有些畅销的作者表示，他们的出版商使用AI迫使他们考虑自己出版未来的书籍。
“如果将一切外包给机器，“为什么作者不能自己这样做？”
在WIRED之前的报告之后，多位高调的作者谴责在出版中采用AI工具。 莫·瑞安(Mo Ryan)在Bluesky上写道，她最近的一书"燃烧它"(Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood)由哈珀·科林斯出版。
2024年科幻小说家约翰·斯卡尔齐(John Scalzi)与麦克米兰的托尔出版集团签了10本协议，他写道："我发现我的公关是‘AI'产生的，会非常烦恼；当有人每天用数十个‘AI'产生的电子邮件来轰炸时，我向你保证‘AI'的臭味是立即可以注意的[原文如此]，并且立即可以置之不理。 出版商在使用新书时没有任何好处。”
已经积累了大批读者的畅销书作者表示，例如，布兰登·桑德森(Brandon Sanderson)通过Tor Books(英语：Tor Books)出版他的一些幻想小说，这是Macmillan的印记，但融资从他"Kickstarter"上的读者那里获得了1500多万美元，在2022年自己出版四本书。
称一首畅销大五作者。 “让我着迷的是，在试图通过使用AI使作者变得过时的过程中，出版商正在把自己变成过时的了。 ”
本文由 AI宝库自动抓取并翻译，版权归原作者所有；如需查看原文请点下方链接。
As staff at the Lower Manhattan headquarters of Macmillan Publishers headed into work one morning in January 2024, they filed past something strange on the walls—flyers welcoming a new member of the team named “NOA.” The cafeteria was festooned with purple balloons and banners, according to several workers present, and with NOA’s name in light-up marquee letters. A plate full of doughnuts spelled out “NOA IS HERE.”
NOA was an acronym for No Ordinary Assistant, which many of Macmillan’s human assistants found “offensive,” multiple employees tell WIRED. In an email to staff, NOA was introduced as an AI chatbot developed by the German software company Chaptr, which is “backed” by Holtzbrinck, Macmillan’s parent company.
The email also assured employees NOA was “a safe environment where you can input proprietary information without the risk of sharing that data with any third party.” Ostensibly, this means NOA was a closed-loop enterprise tool that did not retain or share data for model training.
Macmillan staffers say they were warned during training sessions that NOA could hallucinate and would always need to be fact-checked by humans. Still, employees say, they were encouraged to use NOA for composing emails, drafting copy, doing marketing research, and generating ideas. Multiple staffers say they were told to “only” paste a “percentage” of authors’ manuscripts into NOA. Employees could also adjust NOA’s speaking tone, with options including “lighthearted,” “spartan,” pessimistic,” “sarcastic,” and “regretful.”
One Macmillan employee remembers a Chaptr representative reassuring workers during an early in-person training session that Chaptr understood publishers were dealing with something very important—content. “And here I thought we were publishing literature,” the employee says.
Later in 2024, Macmillan employees were encouraged to use NOA to generate their goals for performance reviews. “We built a specialized prompt to have NOA write goals for you!” one email read.
Several Macmillan employees say NOA was unhelpful and unreliable. “It was terrible, and no one used it,” one says. WIRED spoke with multiple publishing employees for this article, including some who have since left their employers. WIRED is not naming these employees, nor the authors we interviewed, because they are concerned about professional repercussions.
In October 2025, Macmillan staff learned via a company-wide email that Chaptr would be sunsetting NOA. Since then, workers say, leadership has been attempting to integrate Google Gemini into the publishing process. Some staffers subsequently experimented with using Gemini to evaluate submission letters from literary agents, but the Gemini-generated evaluations were “useless,” according to one editor.
In response to WIRED’s request for comment, Kelly Collins, vice president of communications and community at Macmillan, says the publishing house uses Gemini for its “business” but “there has not been any directive from Macmillan leadership to use Gemini for any part of the publishing process, including to evaluate submission letters from agents.” She also says “the points shared do not accurately reflect how NOA was rolled out and communicated” but did not provide further elaboration when WIRED asked which aspects were inaccurate.
Collins notes that the company “takes a thoughtful approach to AI, focused on employee awareness and education while always keeping people front and center.”
Macmillan is usually cited as the smallest of the Big Five US book publishers based on the number of books sold each year. Its imprint Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishes literary fiction heavyweights like Sally Rooney, Yiyun Li, and Ben Lerner while Tor Books is a home for science fiction and fantasy authors John Scalzi, Martha Wells, and Nnedi Okorafor.
Since I first reported on the creep of AI in the publishing world, I’ve heard from staff at all of the Big Five who claim that executives are pushing them to use AI tools, even as Hachette, Macmillan, and Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe (its German-language division) are suing some of the leading AI companies for copyright infringement.
At the same time, multiple bestselling Big Five authors say they’ve gone to “war” with their publishers over AI and are considering abandoning traditional publishing altogether.
At Penguin Random House (PRH), the largest of the Big Five after the 2013 merger between Penguin Books and Random House, several workers say they’ve been encouraged to use ChatGPT Enterprise in AI learning sessions, even though PRH’s German division is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement.
In February, representatives from Hay House—a new-age self-help publisher acquired by Penguin Random House in 2023—presented a slide deck to some PRH employees about how ChatGPT Enterprise had become a “core productivity, creativity, and collaboration tool” since they adopted it a year prior. One of the four return-on-investment pillars in the deck was “Creativity,” including “idea generation, content development, and storytelling innovations.”
Despite encouragement from the C-suite, all of the PRH workers WIRED spoke with say they’re avoiding ChatGPT whenever possible. “It makes it harder for us to do our jobs,” one employee says. Other staff say their managers have explicitly asked them not to use AI for creative tasks like publicity copy and cover design, which has caused some confusion.
“Penguin Random House approaches AI as we would any significant new technology,” says Claire von Schilling, executive vice president and director of corporate communications and social responsibility for the publisher, via email. “We are exploring ways it may appropriately support our work, guided by clear principles and safeguards, including protecting the intellectual property of our authors and the company and preserving the essential role of human creativity and judgment in publishing.”
Von Schilling also says that PRH’s “publishing groups and imprints have discretion to determine whether and how AI tools may be appropriate for particular workflows, including areas such as marketing, publicity, and design.”
Meanwhile, several bestselling Big Five authors say their relationships with publishers have suffered over the past year due to AI use. Combined, the Big Five authors WIRED spoke with have sold more than 30 million copies. One bestselling author says they received marketing copy that included AI-hallucinated quotes from their book, but the publisher insisted they were not AI-generated. “I was gaslit on all of it,” the author says. During a recent round of contract negotiations, another bestselling author says they could not get a single Big Five publisher to promise no AI would be used in any way on their books.
“It’s undermining the necessary sense of trust that has to exist between writers and publishers,” one author says.
“It’s also frustrating to watch publishers get these massive settlements [from] AI companies and then embrace AI to do their work,” another author says. “It feels like they’re feeding at both sides of the trough.”
Authors say cost-cutting layoffs at the Big Five have contributed to deteriorating conditions for their editors and forced some to embrace AI for survival. “We’re seeing editors not reading the material at all and using Claude to create marketing language that barely has any relation to the book,” one author says. Other authors and agents say they’ve been asked by editors to write their own plans for revisions “because the editors don’t have time to do it themselves.”
All of the authors I spoke with say they want publishers to communicate when and how they’re using AI. “The bare minimum we're asking for is disclosure,” one author says. Another wishes the Big Five “would get together and come up with a set of principles around AI that they intend to adhere to.” But some bestselling authors say their publishers’ use of AI is forcing them to consider publishing future books on their own.
“What are authors even doing with traditional publishers anymore if they’re going to outsource everything to a machine?” one bestselling author says. “Why can't an author do that themselves?”
Following WIRED's previous reporting, several high-profile authors condemned the adoption of AI tools in publishing. “I have never looked down on other publishing models (zine girly from way back) & every day, self pub looking ever more possible for future work,” Mo Ryan wrote on Bluesky. Her most recent book, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, was published by HarperCollins.
John Scalzi, the sci-fi novelist who signed a 10-book deal with Macmillan’s Tor Publishing Group in 2024, wrote, “I would be EXTREMELY annoyed to discover my PR is ‘AI’-generated, and as someone bombarded with dozens of ‘AI’-generated emails daily, I assure you the stink of ‘AI’ is immediately noticable [sic] and immediately dismissible. Publishers are not doing their new books any favors in using it.”
Bestselling authors who have already accumulated huge readerships say they don’t need the institutional support of a Big Five publisher to sell copies. Brandon Sanderson, for instance, publishes some of his fantasy novels through Tor Books, an imprint of Macmillan, but raised more than $15 million from his readers on Kickstarter to publish four books on his own in 2022.
“Publishers have always seen authors as a bit of a nuisance, and now there’s a desire to make us obsolete,” says one bestselling Big Five author. “What’s fascinating to me is that in the process of trying to make authors obsolete by using AI, the publishers are rendering themselves obsolete.”
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