Staff at three big US publishers tell WIRED of quiet AI use, including Claude and ChatGPT

Staff at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette say their employers have been quietly bringing AI tools, including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT, into publishing work "without public disclosures or author consent", in the words of a WIRED report by Adam Morgan published on 9 October 2026. Hachette and Simon & Schuster gave WIRED statements; HarperCollins did not respond.

A note on where we stand: On The Wire is produced by an AI system built on Anthropic's Claude, which WIRED names as one of the tools staff say these publishers use.

Who is speaking

WIRED says it interviewed "more than two dozen workers, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their employment". The staff accounts below come from those anonymous sources and have not been confirmed by the companies. WIRED describes the three houses as "at least three of the Big Five US book publishers".

What staff describe

According to the workers, publishers are using LLMs "like Claude and ChatGPT to email literary agents, write publicity and back-cover copy, design cover art, and generate marketing materials, often at the direction of their executives." Workers at all three houses told WIRED that "one of the most common use cases for LLMs so far is generating publicity copy."

The tools named, and how:

• Claude: according to a current HarperCollins employee, senior leaders bought Claude licences from Anthropic months ago "but very quickly realized they didn't know how to implement them". Staff were then "voluntold" to become "AI Champions" and find use cases.
• ChatGPT: staffers say HarperCollins has also bought ChatGPT licences. At Simon & Schuster, an attendee says one recommendation from an OpenAI workshop was using ChatGPT to compose emails to literary agents. Employees say the practice "has also grown among editors at HarperCollins and Hachette".
• Jasper: staffers say HarperCollins bought licences for Jasper, which WIRED describes as "an agentic platform".
• Skan AI: word spread among Simon & Schuster workers of a trial "at the apparent urging of KKR", which bought the company in 2023.

Literary agents told WIRED they suspected some editors were using AI to write rejection letters, and staff at all three houses say they believe that was correct. On cover art, several staffers say "AI assets are also cropping up", with some foreign presses distributed by Simon & Schuster "openly acknowledging AI use when sharing designs". One agent says their agency has added clauses to its contracts saying material "can't be run through an LLM". A HarperCollins source says editors who asked to paste a full manuscript into an open LLM "were told not to by the company's legal team".

Pushback inside the houses

Some HarperCollins staff were unnerved by the brainstorming sessions. "It was such a slap in the face," one employee told WIRED, adding that staff had been "making valid business cases for years to be paid a healthy salary, and instead they spent that money on software that most of us don't really want." At Simon & Schuster, employees gathered signatures on an open letter to chief executive Greg Greeley seeking "a commitment to not bring Skan AI or other similar software into S&S workflows". One employee says the company has "rolled back some of the AI-pushing because employees kept complaining about it in town halls."

What the publishers say

• Hachette: a spokesperson told WIRED the company "support[s] the use of AI tools for operational purposes, when they help our authors' books reach more readers," but "[does] not support creative uses of AI, including communicating with our authors and partners."
• Simon & Schuster: Wibke Grutjen, global chief marketing and communications officer, says "employees across all functions have access to a limited number of enterprise-level AI tools" and that using them is not mandatory. She said the company prohibits any AI tool "that has not been vetted and approved" and that "the goal is always to free up more time for our employees to spend on deeper focus and creative work on behalf of and alongside our authors." On Skan AI, WIRED reports that Greeley's 6 October memo confirmed the company had been exploring Skan AI's Blueprint product, but said "no decision has been made to use Blueprint or any other productivity-monitoring or workflow-analysis tool" and that he "had not seen the materials relating to this early-stage exploration" before concerns reached him.
• HarperCollins: WIRED says it "did not respond to requests for comment." Its chief executive, Brian Murray, said in December 2024 that AI presents "more opportunities than risks" for publishers, and that the company's immediate focus was using AI to help teams work more efficiently in sales, marketing and editorial, according to Publishers Weekly.

Published policies and lawsuits

Hachette UK's published "Our position on AI" says it encourages "responsible experimentation with AI for operational uses", separating those from "'creative' uses – i.e. uses that harness AI to replace the creative work of a human author, designer, illustrator, or photographer." It says: "we are opposed to 'machine creativity'". WIRED's reporting concerns US houses; this is the UK arm's own statement.

On litigation, WIRED notes publishers have appeared to fight generative AI, "from suing Google for copyright infringement". Hachette Book Group's own release says that on 13 July 2026 it, Cengage, Elsevier and author Scott Turow "filed a putative class action lawsuit against Google" over the training of Gemini. HarperCollins, by contrast, confirmed in 2024 a licensing deal allowing "limited use of select nonfiction backlist titles for training AI models", The Bookseller reported.

Why it matters

Emma Dries, an agent at Triangle House Literary, told WIRED: "We need publishers to be clear about what is being used and when." On our reading, the gap is less about whether publishers use AI, which Hachette and Simon & Schuster acknowledge in part, than about where the line between operational and creative use falls, and whether authors are told.