HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster Expand AI Use as Staff Object

NEW YORK — Workers at three of the publishing industry's Big Five houses say generative AI tools have quietly become part of the daily workflow at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, even as those same companies publicly fight AI-generated manuscripts and sue AI companies over copyright, according to interviews with more than two dozen employees published by WIRED on Oct. 9, 2026.

The employees, who spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs, said large language models like Claude and ChatGPT are now used to email literary agents, write publicity and back-cover copy, design cover art, and produce marketing material, often at the direction of executives.

Which publishers are using AI internally?

According to the WIRED report, at least three of the Big Five publishers have adopted AI tools without public disclosure or author consent. That contrasts with the public posture of the industry, which has sued Google over copyright infringement and canceled books by authors suspected of using AI to write them, the report said.

One editor told WIRED that publicized cases — such as Hachette's horror novel "Shy Girl" and Macmillan's thriller "Call Me, I'll Hide the Body" — are "just the tip of the iceberg." The editor said, "Every single imprint has a story of someone very esteemed who had a book canceled because of blatant AI use" that never became public.

What are editors and marketers using AI to do?

Staffers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette told WIRED that generating publicity copy is one of the most common uses of LLMs so far. Publicity copy appears on retail and reader sites including Amazon and Goodreads, giving the tools a direct line to how books are marketed to the public. HarperCollins has also purchased licenses for ChatGPT and Jasper, a platform the company markets as able to run "end-to-end marketing workflows," per the WIRED report. One staffer said at least one HarperCollins division has gone "all in" on AI, including AI-generated marketing videos.

How did HarperCollins roll out its AI program?

HarperCollins senior leaders bought Claude licenses from Anthropic months before the WIRED report, then struggled to implement them, according to a current employee cited in the story. Dozens of junior- and senior-level staff were then assigned — in the employee's words, "voluntold" — to become "AI Champions" tasked with finding new uses for the tools in monthly brainstorming sessions.

This spring, when some employees raised concerns about the legal, ethical, and environmental costs of AI at one of those sessions, a meeting leader dismissed the concerns as "the cost of doing business," according to someone who attended, WIRED reported. Soon after, HarperCollins added a note to its employee portal stating that "while AI does have an environmental impact, it's a small part of most individuals' total digital carbon footprint."

What do workers say about pay and AI spending?

Some HarperCollins staffers described the brainstorming sessions as demoralizing. "It was such a slap in the face," one employee told WIRED. "We've 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."

By the numbers, per WIRED's reporting:

• More than two dozen workers across three publishers were interviewed for the story.
• Three of the Big Five US publishers — HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette — are using AI tools internally, according to the report.
• The average entry-level salary for New York City publishing employees at the Big Five and Scholastic was $47,583 in 2023.

What happens next for publishing staff and AI policy?

WIRED's reporting does not describe any public statement from HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, or Hachette responding to the specific allegations in the story. The report also does not say whether any of the three publishers plan to disclose AI use to authors or readers going forward.

What to watch

• Whether HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, or Hachette issue public statements addressing the WIRED report.
• Whether other Big Five publishers — Penguin Random House and Macmillan — face similar internal disclosures.
• Whether literary agents or author guilds push for disclosure rules on AI-assisted publicity and cover materials.
• Whether entry-level pay in publishing becomes part of the public debate over AI spending at the companies named.

The full WIRED investigation, including additional staff accounts, is available at wired.com.