First, there was the fiasco over the book “Shy Girl” by Mia Ballard being pulled by publisher Hachette, before its U.S. publication, due to suspicions of it being AI generated.
Now, there’s news that the New York Times — which has sued OpenAI for copyright infringement — itself has published a book review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s book “Watching Over Her,” apparently with AI generated parts that mimic an earlier book review.
The Guardian published the earlier book review in August 2025 written by Christobel Kent.
The New York Times then published a later book review in January 2026, written by free lance writer Alex Preston. Upon being notified by a reader of concerns of the provenance of some of the passages in the NYT book review, NYT did an investigation with Preston, who admitted to using AI for parts of a draft.
Here’s what the NYT has noted at the top of the book review: A reader recently alerted The Times that this review included language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian. We spoke to the author of this piece, a freelancer reviewer, who told us he used an A.I. tool that incorporated material from the Guardian review into his draft, which he failed to identify and remove. His reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer are a clear violation of The Times’s standards. The reviewer said he had not used A.I. in his previous reviews for The Times, and we have found no issues in those pieces. The Guardian review of “Watching Over Her” can be read here.
My Take
Both book reviews are heavily plot summaries, which, somewhat ironically, Judge Stein said for an output of ChatGPT could also constitute copyright infringement. Be that as it may, no one appears to be upset about plot summaries of books, at least ones generated by humans.
As far as I can tell, the most offending passage of the NYT book review is the following:
The highlighted are close similarities. The bolded words are identical with words in the Guardian review. (Based on a quick review, the other passages did not contain such copying except for maybe a couple words here or there.)
As indicated in bold, many words in the penultimate paragraph of the New York Times book review are identical to the words in the last paragraph of the Guardian book review.
Looks like a plagiarized passage above (apparently via AI, according to Preson’s explanation). Would it be copyright infringement as well?
Good question.