HORROR novel Shy Girl has been pulled from bookshops after claims it was 78 per cent written by AI – though the author claims she wrote it all herself.
The book became a smash hit when it was self-published by American author and poet Mia Ballard in 2025.
After the “femgore revenge novel” climbed Amazon‘s horror-fiction sales chart, Shy Girl was snapped up by one of the world’s largest publishers, Hachette.
Shy Girl boasted rave reviews from readers on sites like Goodreads.
One reviewer on FanFiAddict gushed: “It will burn through your sinuses and leave you lightheaded.
“It’s a book that seeps into your pores, sticks under your nails and makes you feel like you need a long, scalding shower afterwards.”
When the publisher bought the rights to Ballard’s book it said it had been “such a pleasure to work with Mia on refining her brilliant novel”.
Hachette even planned to release the “unapologetic, visceral revenge horror novel” in the US.
But then speculation began to swirl on social media that the novel was not entirely human-written.
One reviewer said: “I am quite certain that this was written by ChatGPT.”
AI-detection company Pangram then analysed the work and claimed it was 78 per cent generated by AI.
The company’s CEO Max Spero said: “I’m very confident that this is largely AI-generated, or very heavily AI assisted.”
Ballard strongly denied using AI to write the book.
In an email to the New York Times, however, she suggested that an acquaintance that she hired to edit her original draft used the technology.
She said in an email to the newspaper: “All I’m going to say is please do your research on editors before trusting them with your work.
“This controversy has changed my life in many ways, and my mental health is at an all-time low, and my name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do.”
Hachette said it had halted plans to publish the book in the US and that it “would no longer continue to publish its edition” in the UK.
The publisher had previously described Ballard as a writer who lives in northern California with her partner and dog, who “loves all things horror”.
It’s thought to be the first time a major publishing house has had to take such a drastic step over a booked suspected to be machine-written.
The Sun contacted Hachette for comment. Ballard could not be reached.
