Readers Upset When Fantasy Author's Book Exposes Evidence of Using AI to Write Portion of the Novel
Last month, eagle-eyed fans of a particular romance subgenre discovered something galling in the middle of a popular fantasy novel. The author, Lena McDonald, had used an AI chatbot to write portions of her book "Darkhollow Academy : Year 2", which falls under the reverse harem genre. However, what made this discovery even more egregious was that she also attempted to copy the style of another bestselling author, J. Bree.
"I've rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree's style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements," a deleted passage in chapter three of the novel reads, as seen in screenshots posted on the ReverseHarem subreddit earlier this month.
J. Bree is a well-known author in the romance and fantasy genre, with an internationally bestselling series of novels to her name. The incident is just another example of how Amazon's self-publishing platform is being flooded with AI-generated content, which has been going on for years since the technology became mainstream.
This trend is not only a problem for human authors but also for readers, who are seeing more and more books that were written by AI rather than actual writers. In one shocking example, author Jane Friedman discovered that roughly a dozen books were being sold on Amazon with her name on them.
Readers took to the internet to express their outrage over McDonald's use of AI in her book, tearing it up with one-star reviews and sharing screenshots of the offending passages. "This was written with generative AI, as is clear by the prompt that was left in the book before uploading to Amazon," wrote one disgruntled reviewer.
"I will support authors in many ways, but generative AI is theft and it's not a replacement for actual writing," another reader chimed in. "I would assume all of her other writing uses AI as well, as book 1 of this series released 1/24/25, book 2 on 3/13/25, and book 3 on 3/23/25," wrote a GoodReads reviewer.
McDonald's blunder has sparked controversy over the use of AI-generated content in self-published books on Amazon. While some argue that AI tools can be helpful for writers, others believe that it undermines the value and uniqueness of human-written work.
An Amazon spokesperson pointed us to the company's content guidelines, which govern "which books can be listed for sale, regardless of how the content was created." However, the exact rules surrounding the use of AI-generated content remain somewhat unclear.