10.28.26
From January 2024 to October 2025, Macmillan encouraged its employees to use an in-house AI chatbot called No Ordinary Assistant (NOA), WIRED reports. Workers at the company were told that NOA could hallucinate and needed to be fact-checked but were also assured that it was safe to input proprietary information. Many authors view the creep of AI in the publishing world as ironic in light of the fact that some of the country’s biggest publishers are also suing some of the leading AI companies for copyright infringement. One said it is “frustrating to watch publishers get these massive settlements [from] AI companies and then embrace AI to do their work,” adding that “[i]t feels like they’re feeding at both sides of the trough.”