AI<\/a> in the publishing and movie\/TV industries. <\/p>\n\n\tBasically, questions were raised over whether the author, an SMU grad student, used AI as a tool in the writing of the book. The problem: publishers and movie companies cannot register copyright and come away with a clear title chain if there is anything AI in the mix. That\u2019s because AI-aided copy is an amalgamation of many other copyrighted works.<\/p>\n
\n\tFrom what I\u2019m hearing, this will be an important teaching moment for writers with aspirations to become serious bankable authors. The lesson: stay the hell away from AI.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019m told it\u2019s routine for publishers and their reps to ask authors if they used AI, and all parties proceeded in good faith after getting assurances from the author that he did not. That was called into question after the Call Me rights began selling around the world, and movie\/TV interest heated up. There are apparently fingerprints, or something that raised the flags of AI censors.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Thursday, Sandy Hodgman, an independent from Hodgman Literary who sells foreign rights for Europa Content, pulled back its submission of the novel to eager international publishers. Here is the email, which Deadline secured:<\/p>\n
Jerry Falade produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion. During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with Jerry for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilizing AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process. We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.<\/p>\n
This raises so many questions about authorship and what AI means for this industry but those are questions for another day. We regret that our enthusiasm led to this outcome and we apologize to our publishing partners.<\/p>\n
\n\tUTA and Europa Content are selling the rights, and their efforts took off when a huge U.S. offer deal was set in place. After the extraordinary email, everything is up in the air. It might be difficult to get the momentum back, even if proper assurances are in place that the author did all the work himself, with no help from AI. Conceivably, a rights buyer would have no more protection than anyone publishing a work in the public domain. It\u2019s one thing to dust off a classic like The Odyssey, still another when the work is fresh and the rights messy and tangled. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe novel sounds awesomely promising. The protagonist, Femi Johnson, sounds a bit like The Wolf, the \u201cCleaner\u201d character played in Pulp Fiction by Harvey Keitel. Here, the protagonist trades his \u201ccleaner\u201d origins in Lagos, Nigeria, to pursue a chemistry PhD in Houston. His ability to make bodies disappear brings him opportunities and peril as circumstances lead to employment by a cartel operator.<\/p>\n
\n\tStay tuned. This just happened yesterday, so when there is something to update, we will add any comments. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: That screeching sound you heard Wednesday from international publishers and film rights buyers was an abrupt application…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,62704,62705,1734,62706],"class_list":["post-124657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-call-me-ill-hide-the-body","tag-jerry-falade","tag-techline","tag-the-dish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}