Let’s Talk About That “Summer Reading List for 2025” Article

A “Summer Reading List for 2025” article recently published in major newspapers (yes, print) blew up online—for all the wrong reasons. Ten of the fifteen recommended books in the piece do not exist. Why? Because the piece was written by generative AI. And anyone who’s used the technology knows: it doesn’t write, it guesses—and it guesses with confidence.

AI Will Guess Sometimes

The “author” used generative AI to create the article. Anyone who has used generative AI knows this already. It makes things up, or guesses, and does so shamelessly because it’s not a real intelligence.

Here I am using human terms to describe it. In reality, AI is aptly named because it is not intelligent. It mimics intelligence. The real intelligence came from the humans whose work it was trained on. AI is powerful software trained on a massive amount of human work. Human intelligence. The software reorganizes the work and presents it in a way that mimics human speech.

My first thought when I heard about the attention this article received after being printed in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer was, “How did this make it past an editor?”

Silly question, I realized instantly. It made it past the editor for the same reason the “author” didn’t write the article they were being paid to create. Doesn’t he realize how many skilled writers would love to be paid to write an article about incredible books coming out this summer? Or how massive the bullpen is of those talented individuals who dream of being paid to write at all?

Actually, I have to be fair. Maybe the person's child was in the hospital, or his wife had been in a car wreck, and he was dealing with the logistics of arranging childcare for his kids and transporting them to activities. Maybe this was a one-time thing. He may have needed to phone it in and happened to get caught. The same could be said for the editor. I have no idea what either person was going through. Upon further reflection, I’m going to keep my first thought to myself.

My second thought, however, was very “glass half full.” I’m glad this subject is coming to light. The flaws in this technology are overlooked by some, and I’ve had mixed feelings myself.

My Journey with AI

I became aware of ChatGPT early on. I had fun messing with it and shared it with some friends, who had a lot more fun with it than I did, and spent a good deal of time experimenting.

Around that time, I’d finished the first drafts of my middle-grade fantasy trilogy and was looking into how to market the first book. I began by doing a little research and talking with other authors. One suggested David Gaughran’s “Let’s Get Digital.” This ebook is directed toward those looking to self-publish, which I thought I wanted to do at the time. This, and all of David’s resources, turned out to be a wealth of helpful advice based on experience. It led me to the book “Newsletter Ninja,” which I devoured, thinking I’d have the key to a long list of subscribers (by the way, have you subscribed to my newsletter?). The thing that kept repeating in all of this was the need for a website.

An author’s webpage could be a simple landing page. However, I thought I’d have more success by blogging. Was that still a thing? I wanted a good-looking website with colorful pictures and deep insights in a well-thought-out blog post. Now I needed social media accounts and content to put on all these outlets.

Marketing reminded me of the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

In my usual “ready, fire, aim” fashion, I jumped in after a brief look at how to use free stock photography without violating copyright. I was on the up and up, but the photography, although professional and well done, lacked a personal touch.

Shortly after, I discovered AI-generated art. This was great, I could generate images based on the content of the post. I could get “creative” with it. At first, this seemed like an inexpensive compromise. I am not that type of artist and could not afford to hire one for every blog post, which I planned to put out weekly. This was another instance where my enthusiasm and willingness to take on more projects exceeded the hours of the day (Remember that ready, fire, aim approach I mentioned?)

The result looked impressive—at first. But it did not take long for me to spot, and eventually detest, that unmistakable AI “look. Shortly after, my work on the blog took an extended hiatus as I dove into extensive rewrites of the first book. Marketing was on hold. I went dark on social media and turned off the podcast microphone. It was during this time that I learned how those images were generated. I heard from the artist and learned of copyright infringement and supposed grey areas that the technology took advantage of before anyone knew it was happening. This meant the damage was done long before anyone could draft legislation to protect the artist.

Shortly after the explosion of outrage over AI in the writing community came. People were using AI to write children’s books (and all types of books, but it was especially prevalent here), and AI to illustrate them. The heart was being torn out of literature for children. If no one pushed back, we were close to kids having no interest in reading or storytelling. They are human lie detectors and are more in tune with spotting a fake than desensitized adults. If they grew up with fake books, a connection with literature could never be fostered.

I canceled my AI subscription and bought a camera. I’d use it for the video portion of the podcast, but also, I decided, I’ll take my own pictures. I’ll make my own art or have it created by a person. I’ll sketch something—I don’t know, we’ll figure it out, I’m sure. I’m no artist in that medium, but it will be real. It will be genuine.

Now that I’m done with rewrites and entering the querying phase, I plan (emphasis on plan) to focus my effort on the blog and podcast again. I may even put some excerpts on social media, though I do not have much psychic energy budgeted for that particular time sink. This means the website will be getting a makeover.

Where are Things Going?

Quite ironically, the AI software Grammarly, which some use for grammatical corrections, offers a new feature that will track your writing and create a certificate that showing how much of the work was typed by a human, how much was copy and pasted from an unknown source, and how much automatic spelling and grammar correction took place. This is an interesting feature, though I believe using the software as intended to fix grammar comes with a host of issues.

The program is in a beta phase as of this writing, and primarily works well in Google Docs, though Grammarly claims it works in Word as well. It does not, in my experience.

Now we’re using AI to prove that we didn’t use AI. That’s where we are, at least for now. I suppose this makes sense. I honestly would have liked to apply this technology to the three books I’ve just spent four years crafting, so no one would have to wonder. As it stands, I’ll leave a link to the certificate of this writing. You can even watch a sped-up version of the creation. It will be kind of like watching Bob Ross create a painting in real time, except boring and without commentary.