Michelle Hurley: Publishers Association of New Zealand spokesperson on the impact of AI on publishing

Two books by distinguished authors were recently ruled out of New Zealand’s premier literary prize because their covers used AI art.

Elizabeth Smither’s Angel Train and Stephanie Johnson’s Obligate Carnivore, both of whom received one of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, were removed from contention in the in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Publishers Association of New Zealand spokesperson Michelle Hurley joined the Afternoons team to discuss.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Two respected New Zealand authors have been ruled out of
the country's top prize, that is, the Open Book Awards
after it was confirmed that their book covers were created
using artificial intelligence. Michelle Hurley is spokesperson for the Publisher's
Association Association of New Zealand, and she joins US now Michelle,
very good, afternoons.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
You nice to be here.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
So before we get on to the book cover situation
that we're talking about, how big a problem is AI
and publishing as a whole in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Oh, that's a big question, Matt. But it's hard to know,
isn't it, Because what you don't know you don't know.
But generally we've noticed in terms of manuscripts, certainly some
submissions we've seen have been clearly AI generated. At this point,
it still feels easy to identify. And yes, we're not

(01:10):
we're not in the business of paying roties to artificial intelligence.
We reject those.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
So I'm just talking about to my contract because full disclosure,
you were you were my editor on on my book.
I can't. I can't remember. I didn't read my contract
very well. I probably should have run it through check GVT,
but it seems to have worked out all right for
me so far. But there was some there was some
percentage that it's said in there, and I'm sure it's standard.
There was something about AI in the in the contract.
Is there a standard standard deal with authors around how

(01:39):
much AI content can be?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
I think it might have been inspired to send or something. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean it's sort of like AI is, as everyone knows,
can be used in lots of different ways. So I
guess if you're using it to you know, to check something,
that's fine. That when you're using it to create, and
this is like I guess the broader point that we

(02:01):
would make generally is that creativity is publishing is built on,
and we believe in investing and authors and illustrators and
photographers and designers, and that to do that you have
to value their work and ensure that their work's compensated.

(02:21):
So if you don't do that, then then you know
you're not going to be able to have an ecosystem
where people get paid, where that work is protected and respected.
So that's where that's where it's all coming from essentially,
that is.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, that is important, Michelle. Is it hard to pack
up when AI has been used? Do you see it
yourself if you're when you're reading these manuscripts, or you've
got software to be able to detect it.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah. Well, we run on our manuscripts through a pagiarism
checker which now includes AI. So yes, we do check.
We do check. Look, yes, sometimes it's really obvious. I'll
give you an example. We are for out. We have
an annual fiction prize that we that we run, and
so we get a lot of fiction submissions, and we

(03:13):
had one submission that had a line and it said
he turned, he turned to the left, and then in
square brackets that said west or east. Okay, Yeah, no,
sometimes it's quite easy.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
Something only a robot would say.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
Now with this this year around the Jan Medlicott Prize,
should a non AI book be judged by its AI
cover or is this a case in this case not
judge at all because it has an AI cover because
the author has very little to do with the covering.
You know, if the whole book, if the writing is

(03:56):
above board and written by the author and not AI,
is it their fault that the cover is AI. Aren't
they two different disciplines?

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Well, the criter, it depends what the criteria is, and
the criteria has always been very clear with the book
awards trust that it's the overall book. It's not just
the text. So and while you know there is a
heavy weighting towards the writing, it is not. It's never
just been based on the writing. So for that reason,

(04:25):
that's why AO anything AI generated is excluded.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
What about proofreading a book because the I know with
my book that the proofreaders were absolute heroes because there
was a sentence without a horrible.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Error in those Paul Buggers.

Speaker 4 (04:40):
So are they in danger for their job with the
proof reading because you know that's not really that's not
the creative part of it. I mean, there's a cinematic
creativy trying to work out what I was actually trying
to say.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
But you know what I mean, sure, yeah, and I
can see that some people, you know, almost like it's
just like running it through a spell check, but it's
actually a lot more complex than that. So I think
what a I can't really replace is taste and judgment,
and that is a really big part of the proofreader's
role not just the facts. They're also going hang on

(05:14):
something here feels off or that doesn't quite work. You know,
technically it might be true, but it doesn't work in
that context. So I would say at the moment proofreaders,
you know, unless AI gets to that point where it
can can do all of that sort of stuff, and
I don't think it can at this stage in their space.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
As a publisher, that's interesting that you said before. So
I don't really think about this, but as a publisher
you see the whole thing that there was a criteria
for this award, but also as publishers you see the
whole thing as a work of art, including the cover.
So even though without the criteria of this awards, you
still as a publisher wouldn't support AI covers.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, I think the issue you have is that so
publishing in New Zealand is a really small industry. I
think we employ about five hundred people, give or take,
and many of those people are illustrators and designers, and
we need them to make our books compelling and to
sell our books so that people so that they're beautiful,

(06:14):
so that people want to pick them up, you know,
picking up a cover you know, everybody does judge a
book by its cover that old age. So unless we
support everybody in that publishing ecosystem, then we are going
to shrink and we won't have those people. So we
need to support them, even if it's just you know,
even if the cover may seem tangentdental to a fiction

(06:35):
writing award, it's all part of the same ecosystem.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
You remember that person that I was trying to get
you to do. I had a friend that I want
to do the cover from my book, and you spent
hundreds of hours trying to track them down. He could
probably leave the ecosystem there.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, but then we spound someone else, didn't we and we.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Did pay her and she was fantastic and it was
a good cover, very good cover. Yeah, she did beautiful work.
Just last question from me, Michelle's so clearly you're quite
you know, you've got expertise picking up AI writing is
chet GBT and the like? Is it just is it
a terrible writer as in that you can see when
it's soulless and you can see that it doesn't have
that human touch. Is that something you can pick up

(07:16):
pretty readily?

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:21):
I think how to know isn't it. I think it
depends what you're what you're talking about. Are you talking
about a report, you know, you know, structure this report
that I have to send to my shareholders. You know,
it's probably really effective at something like that. But when
you're trying to create something new, which is at the
heart of it, which is what book publishing is about,
it's creating something new and original, then I think that's

(07:45):
that's the key difference, and hopefully we can we can
still spot that. Yeah, Michelle, I might be out of
a job too.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Michelle has been really great chatting with you. Thank you
very much for coming on. Pleasure that is Michelle Hurley.
She a spokesperson for the Publishers Association of New Zealand
and helps you out mate with your book that has
done very well.

Speaker 4 (08:05):
I've got to say she is fantastic. Yeah, she's a fantastic.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
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