Preston told the Guardian<\/a> he is \u201chugely embarassed\u201d and \u201cmade a huge mistake\u201d. <\/p>\n Alex Preston has admitted to using AI to help write a book review. The Times promptly dropped Preston, calling his \u201creliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer\u201d a \u201cclear violation of the Times\u2019s standards\u201d. An editor\u2019s note now precedes the review<\/a> online, advising readers of the issue and providing a link to the Guardian review.<\/p>\n Preston\u2019s apology<\/a> to the Guardian raises more questions than it resolves. The portion quoted online seems to speak more to the issue of unattributed work than his use of AI. It reads: \u201cI made a serious mistake in using an AI tool on a draft review I had written, and I failed to identify and remove overlapping language from another review that the AI dropped in.\u201d This implies that if he had removed the \u201coverlapping\u201d language, the issue would have been avoided.<\/p>\n As a literary critic and scholar, I believe the deeper question isn\u2019t whether or not critics should do more to hide their use of AI \u2013 but the ethics of using it at all. <\/p>\n Why AI can\u2019t do criticism<\/p>\n The role of the critic isn\u2019t to summarise or repackage art, but to actively participate in a conversation about it. \u201cGood criticism thrives in the complexity of its environment,\u201d writes critic Jane Howard<\/a>, who is also The Conversation\u2019s Arts + Culture editor. \u201cEach review sits in conversation with every other review of a piece of art, with every other review the critic has written.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the critic is in conversation with both the artist and the audience. The critic\u2019s emotional and intellectual engagement with art \u2013 and their translation and communication of meaning \u2013 is intrinsic to their role as mediator. That role is deeply human.<\/p>\n Perhaps information can be outsourced, but emotional engagement can\u2019t. Nor can an individual perspective, filtered through one human\u2019s reading, viewing, listening and experiences.<\/p>\n Art and AI controversies<\/p>\n There are valid arguments outlining the functional uses of AI<\/a>, and warning against significant climate repercussions<\/a>. But there is also an escalating concern around the intrusion of AI into creative expression.<\/p>\n Shy Girl was cancelled due to AI accusations against its author.<\/p>\n Last month, author Mia Ballard was accused of using AI<\/a> to write her horror novel, Shy Girl. It was withdrawn from publication in the UK and cancelled from scheduled publication in the US, after \u201creaders on platforms such as Goodreads and Reddit had questioned whether sections of the text bore hallmarks of AI-generated prose\u201d, according to the Guardian.<\/p>\n In 2023, German artist Boris Eldagsen sparked controversy<\/a> when he revealed that his prize-winning photograph The Electrician was AI generated. In 2025, Tilly Norwood, the first fully AI-generated \u201cactress\u201d ignited debate<\/a> around whether so-called synthetic actors were a tool for creative expression, or a threat to human creators. <\/p>\n In 2025, writers were \u201chorrified\u201d<\/a> to discover that their work had been pirated by Meta to train AI systems. <\/p>\n If the question that underlies these examples is \u201cwhat is the role of art\u201d, this latest debacle adds \u201cand what is the responsibility of the critic\u201d?<\/p>\n Breaking a pact<\/p>\n Art criticism in Australia is what Howard describes<\/a> as a \u201cniche within a niche\u201d. The sector is unbearably small, so most critics have an additional day job and are in close professional and personal proximity to the artists whose work they review. <\/p>\n Some critics of the critics, such as writer Gideon Haigh<\/a>, have suggested this has led to a culture of what literary academic Emmett Stinson called \u201ctoo-nice<\/a>\u201d criticism. <\/p>\n But I would argue generosity is fundamental to public-facing criticism \u2013 and that the critic reviewing in the public sphere has a responsibility to writers and readers.<\/p>\n The writer might safely assume that when we\u2019re publishing a review that surmises their book\u2019s successes and failings against its ambition, we have, at the very least, taken the time to read and carefully consider their work, and our own response to it. <\/p>\n This unspoken pact is broken when the writer begins to use AI \u2013 particularly when a professional reviewer like Preston seems to outsource his assessment to it. <\/p>\n Such fiascos point to a disturbing future where readers\u2019 opportunities to build community and develop empathy<\/a> through engagement with literature is outsourced entirely to AI.<\/p>\n Australian literature academic Julieanne Lamond has said<\/a> \u201cwhen we write reviews we have to do it \u2018naked\u2019 \u2013 as individual readers, with a public to judge our judgements\u201d. In other words, we sit at the middle of a pact between the writer of a book and their potential readers.<\/p>\n Criticism can be literature<\/p>\n Done well, criticism is literature<\/a>. As Australian author, playwright and critic Leslie Rees argued<\/a> in 1946, good literary criticism is a \u201creal and creative service to literature\u201d. <\/p>\n Watching Over Her is at the centre of a controversy over the use of AI in writing a New York Times book review.<\/p>\n Popular criticism, written for the general public and published as journalism, might sit on a different playing field from scholarly criticism. But its obligation to readers \u2013 to convey real and honest opinions about books and bring readers into a conversation about literature \u2013 is no less significant. There is a shared obligation to be honest, and surely this honesty extends to a transparency about AI use.<\/p>\n French professor and essayist Phillipe Lejeune, best known for his work on autobiography, used the term the \u201cautobiographical pact<\/a>\u201d to describe the relationship between the writer of a memoir and the reader. That is, the reader accepts what the memoirist says as truth, based on the writer\u2019s acknowledgements of their own biases and subjectivity. <\/p>\n We might transfer a similar pact to the reviewer and their reader. Should the reader not be able to trust that the review they\u2019re reading is the critic\u2019s own?<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/file-20260401-57-gzb8ud.jpg\")
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