AI Is Destroying the Trust Between Writers and Readers

Rachel Kadish argues that AI-enabled literary fraud is damaging the trust readers and writers need to connect. She recounts a couple challenging her over a character’s supposed assisted suicide - a plot point falsely supplied by ChatGPT, not present in her novel. Since 2025, at least five unrelated novels have appeared on Amazon under her book’s exact title. Other scams are more direct: novelist Daphne Kalotay found an AI-generated book falsely listed under her name, while Kadish herself was impersonated in an email to another writer. Authors also receive fabricated messages posing as heartfelt reader praise, which turn into pitches for paid marketing schemes. Cheap text generation and rapid self-publishing make these scams easy to produce and difficult for platforms to prevent.

The damage extends beyond lost sales or nuisance: readers may be misled about what a writer has said, while writers grow suspicious of genuine correspondence. Kadish contrasts these hollow deceptions with earlier literary frauds, whose exposure revealed human motives and readers’ longing for certain stories. Authentic reader responses can also change literature: Charles Dickens reconsidered anti-Semitic portrayals after a reader’s criticism, and public protest helped bring Sherlock Holmes back. Such exchanges create opportunities for challenge, empathy, and growth. When bots impersonate readers and authors, those encounters become harder to trust, severing a meaningful human relationship at a time when stories’ capacity to shape understanding matters greatly.