In the 21st century publishing world, I can tell you from experience that even before LLMs, book authors who didn’t step in and do things themselves—or hire a freelancer with part of their advance—could often end up seeing surprisingly little effort go into things like design and publicity copy. But a new, anonymously-sourced report from Wired suggests AI is taking things from bad to worse.

Wired talked to “more than two dozen” anonymous publishing industry employees, and found that three of the big five publishers are allegedly using AI and failing to notify the authors, let alone the public.

In part, this is publicity-related. Publishers are reportedly generating PR material and cover copy with tools like ChatGPT and Claude. They’re also, according to Wired’s sources, using image generators to create cover art.

This comes at a time when AI and books seem like forces arrayed against one another. The big five publishers jointly filed a lawsuit in May against Meta, alleging copyright infringement. Meanwhile, used booksellers are seeing their inventory snapped up by what they believe to be AI companies looking to literally destroy books—often rare ones.

While that’s going on, literacy is in an all-out crisis. By one measure, students are the worst they’ve been at reading in 25 years. A study on people’s self-reported habits found that from 2003 to 2023, reading for pleasure declined about 3% per year. 44% of American men in particular didn’t read a book in 2025.

But rather disturbingly, these measures of low reading and literacy coincide with good news for the publishers and their shareholders.

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