‘Definitely innocent!!!’: An author accused of using AI lost a multimillion-dollar book deal — are LLMs killing the publishing industry?

However, in a twist fit for a novel, Falade’s agent Marc Gerald, primary agent of Europa Content, pulled the book from submission on July 29, citing concerns that Falade used AI to write what would be his debut novel. The sudden, high-profile turn of events is the latest in the ongoing discussion about AI within the publishing industry.

A new author’s book deal is canceled

Gerald and his agency, which are no longer affiliated with Falade, had to win their own 10-way bidding war to represent Falade and his book.

“The book was stunningly good, everyone fell in love with it,” Gerald said in an interview with The Bookseller. “It’s a book that appeals to absolutely everyone.”

According to Gerald, an editor was concerned the book may have been written using AI partway through the submission process, but they, “went through the manuscript [with the author] in extreme detail, discussed the responsibilities of an author, and ultimately continued with the submission,” Gerald told The Bookseller.

Ultimately, the agency decided to pull the book after a meeting on July 29, when “aspects of [the author’s] story changed,” Gerald said. “We need to have total faith.”

After rescinding its submission, Hodgman Literary, which sells books to international publishers and represented Falade, sent an email, obtained by Deadline, to international publishers, which reads: “[The author] 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.”

An anonymous editor who bid on the novel told The Bookseller that they didn’t detect any AI while reading the manuscript, “and neither did any of [their] sales, marketing or publicity colleagues who also read alongside [them],” they said.

Falade has denied using AI to write the text of the book.

“The story, characters, scenes, humor, structure and voice came from me, and I have time-stamped drafts, written notes and dated WhatsApp messages documenting the book’s development,” Falade told The Bookseller.

However, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Falade says he used an open-source AI model running locally on his device for book research. He says he used the AI model to query searches on topics that might raise red flags when taken out of context, like what chemicals may be useful for dissolving a human body.

“Within six hours of the rumors, I lost U.S., U.K., translation, and screen opportunities without being given a proper chance to explain my writing process,” Falade told The Bookseller.

Falade also called into question the results of AI detection software being used as conclusive evidence when they can provide false positives.

“I tested passages from books published in 2012 and 2017, and the software classified them as 98 and 99% AI-generated, despite their predating the widespread availability of generative AI,” he said.

However, Gerald denies using AI detection software in their decision to rescind their submission.

“The technology isn’t at a place where we have determined it’s reliable anyway,” he told The Bookseller.

Falade says the AI accusations against him are a result of racial biases in the publishing industry.

“There seems to be a troubling assumption that when a Black writer produces work that attracts significant attention, the work could not possibly be their own,” he said in a statement to The Guardian.

He also took to social media to share his thoughts on the matter.

“Definitely innocent!!!” Falade wrote in an Instagram story on Tuesday. “They CAN’T and WON’T stop this Black boy’s light from shining!!” he wrote in another.

An industry struggling to keep up with AI

The email sent out to international publishers after the book’s withdrawal concludes with: “This raises so many questions about authorship and what AI means for this industry, but those are questions for another day.”

However, this is not the first time these questions have arisen. In March 2026, Hatchette, one of the Big Five publishing companies alongside Macmillan, halted the publication of horror novel “Shy Girl” after The New York Times presented evidence that the book may be AI-generated. Additionally, a study of 14,419 self-published books on Amazon, put through AI detection program Pangram, found that 50% of the prose in 2,168 of the books were AI-generated and 970 of them were 90% AI-generated.