Mia Ballard's novel Shy Girl was cancelled for using AI. You only know half the story

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Mia Ballard's novel Shy Girl was cancelled for using AI. You only know half the story"

Podcast: There Are No Girls on the Internet
Host: Bridget Todd
Guest: Dre of the Dre Dossier
Date: April 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the controversial cancellation of Shy Girl, a horror novel by Black author Mia Ballard, by the major publisher Hachette, following allegations that Ballard used AI to generate the book’s content. Host Bridget Todd and investigative journalist Dre (“Dre of the Dre Dossier”) delve deeply into the process behind these allegations, the biases and failures of AI detection tools, the media’s role (with a focus on the New York Times), and wider implications for marginalized authors and the publishing industry as a whole.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Events Surrounding Mia Ballard and "Shy Girl"

• Background (05:45):
  • Mia Ballard wrote and self-published Shy Girl. Hachette later acquired it, even after initial controversy surrounding uncredited cover art.
  • The book received mixed reviews, and online speculation (notably a 3-hour video by YouTuber “Frankie’s Shelf”) erupted, accusing it of being AI-generated.
  • Max Spiro, CEO of AI detection company Pangram, ran the full text through his proprietary software and claimed that 78% was AI-generated. This led to major coverage by the New York Times.
  • Hachette canceled Ballard’s contract, making this a landmark case—the first time a Big Five publisher dropped an author based on AI detection tools.

2. Questions of Due Process and Precedent

• Who Sets the Standard? (02:51, 09:13):
  • Bridget Todd raises central questions: "Who gets to set the standard, and maybe more importantly, who gets protected by it and who gets sacrificed to it?"
  • Dre highlights that such cases will set industry benchmarks for dealing with future AI allegations:

    "All of these landmark cases are going to serve as the larger outline for how we treat future cases." (09:13)

  • The lack of a formal, transparent process for investigating AI accusations creates a dangerous precedent—leaving authors exposed and at the mercy of questionable evidence.

3. The Role and Reliability of AI Detection Tools

• Faulty Apparatus (38:53):
  • Despite Pangram's claims of “1 in 10,000” false positives, research shows no AI detection tool consistently achieves even 85% accuracy; accuracy plummets for mixed or edited text.
  • Tools are disproportionately likely to flag non-native English writers and those who write outside of standard norms—a documented racial and linguistic bias.
  • Snap decision-making based on these tools lacks accountability and context. Even Thad McElroy, who brought the allegations, has written that such scores should only be "guidance, not proof of guilt" (07:39, 42:59). Yet, these tools are used as decisive evidence.

4. Media Collusion and Conflict of Interest

• New York Times’ Involvement (15:59, 17:58):
  • The Times failed to disclose that:
    • The whistleblower, Thad McElroy, had a long-standing professional relationship with Pangram.
    • The Pangram sales rep who first flagged the book is incentivized to demonstrate the tool’s efficacy.
    • The evidence was gathered using a pirated copy of Shy Girl.
  • Dre:

    "The facts that media and tech are working this closely together should be very, very concerning to everybody." (02:39, 56:31)

  • This reflects a larger, troubling alliance between tech companies and media outlets—propping up each other’s interests without proper scrutiny.

5. Inconsistent Treatment and Structural Bias in Publishing

• Power and Protection (34:16, 35:54, 37:26):
  • Thad McElroy, a white male consultant, faced similar AI accusations for his own book (eight months earlier), but had the issue resolved in a weekend due to industry connections.
  • Mia Ballard—a Black woman debut author—was not given the same benefit of the doubt or access to support, exacerbating systemic racial disparities.
  • Dre:

    "How can you not at least ask the question of what played a role in this when, you know, a 50-some-year-old white guy has the same thing happen to him and it gets fixed over a weekend?" (37:26)

6. Lack of Publisher Accountability

• Hachette’s Reaction (10:42, 44:24, 67:43):
  • Hachette dropped Ballard based largely on media pressure and AI tool output, without meaningful process or defense of their author.
  • Bridget Todd:

    "A tool with documented racial and linguistic blind spots was used as the primary evidence to end a black woman's writing career. And she was not really given an opportunity to meaningfully defend herself." (40:02)

  • Major publishers, despite their resources, are unprepared to handle AI accusations with due diligence—leaving the burden of proof and consequences on individual authors, especially those least protected.

7. The Dangerous Incentive Structure of AI Detection

• Business Model and Incentive (53:15, 55:54):
  • AI detection companies like Pangram have commercial reasons to foment AI panic and promote their tools as the industry standard—often leveraging media scandals for publicity.
  • The resulting incentive structure enables these companies to profit from high-stakes disputes, with little oversight into their methodologies or conflict of interest.

8. Failure of Legislation & Urgency for Standards

• No Guardrails (28:36, 67:56, 69:33):
  • As revealed by Dre, the White House action plan (released the same day the NYT piece went live) actually limits federal and state regulation around AI and copyright, leaving individuals exposed and publishers unchecked.
  • Dre and Bridget both warn that without robust, industry-wide standards and legal protections, marginalized creators will continue to bear the brunt of errors and scapegoating in an unregulated AI arms race.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The question is not whether or not Mia used AI. I don’t know. And honestly, neither do you, neither does Hachette, and really, neither does the New York Times." - Bridget Todd (07:39)

• "It can't be Mia Ballard's fault—just the same way it can't be always each individual artist's fault. We have to find a way that the system is going to work through this." - Dre of the Dre Dossier (11:46)

• "The standards and leeway that we give tech companies and the tech bros and tech leaders that run them is absurd. If a pharmaceutical company’s sales rep brought a story to a journalist at the Times and that story relied entirely on that same company’s product as key evidence, we would call that what it is—a conflict of interest." - Podcast Interviewer/Bridget Todd (57:57)

• "It feels better to say bad guy, good guy, end of story. And as we know, that’s just not true… especially with a story like this." - Dre of the Dre Dossier (63:48)

• "If it bothers you that race is brought into this as a conversation, I would say ask yourself where that comes from and do internal work there, and then maybe we can all have this larger conversation." - Dre of the Dre Dossier (73:44)

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Important Timestamps

• Allegations Surface & Initial Reaction: 05:12–07:39
• Deep Dive on AI Detection Tools & Their Flaws: 38:53–42:14
• Media Conflict of Interest Unpacked: 15:59–23:45
• Comparison between Ballard & McElroy (Privilege & Process): 34:16–37:26
• Outlining the Industry’s Lack of Standards: 67:43–69:13
• Broader Policy and Structural Failings: 28:36, 56:31, 67:56
• Memorable Closing Reflection: 73:44

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Conclusion

This episode pulls back the curtain on the Shy Girl controversy to expose how easily individual authors, especially Black women and other marginalized groups, can be made scapegoats by broken industry processes, unreliable and biased tools, and opportunistic tech-media alliances. Both Bridget Todd and Dre urge listeners to look beyond simple narratives of guilt or innocence and instead focus on the urgent need for equitable, transparent processes and systemic safeguards—because who gets sacrificed next could be anyone.

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Find Dre on Substack, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok as “Dre Dossier” for more reporting on tech, power, and policy.

Transcript

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[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

The facts that media and tech are working this closely together should be very, very concerning.

[Bridget Todd]

There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet. There's a question that I keep coming back to when I think about AI and creative work, and that is who gets to set the standard and maybe more importantly, who gets protected by it and who gets sacrifice to it. And to explore that, I want to talk about a story that I think we're all getting kind of wrong. It's about a black woman author, a major publisher, a powerful newspaper, and an AI detection company whose business model depends on all of us believing that their tool is the final word on what counts as human. And it all starts with a horror novel called Shy Girl by author Mia Ballard. Now, there's a good chance you've heard about this story already. I just talked about it on the podcast, stuff mom never told you'd, and I only now just realized that I only had about half of the story. Dre of the Dre dossier has been working tirelessly to fill in that other half.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

I'm Dre of the Dre Dossier and I'm thrilled to be here.

[Bridget Todd]

I think that even of big legacy

[Podcast Interviewer]

journalism outlets, you have been doing the most in depth coverage of a lot of things, but particularly the Mia Ballard Shy Girl saga. What was it that made you want to. That drew you to that story in the first place?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah, I mean, I always keep an eye on the AI tech side of things. Right. And I found just this interesting convergence of the same day that that story broke. The White House sent over to Congress the AI action plan, what they wanted Congress to vote on and stuff. And I just found it to be such an interesting dichotomy of, like, here is this one story about, like, what happens to artists if they do or don't use AI. And then here are, you know, here's a plan for the people to be protected, you know, at the top. And so that kind of is what drew me to initially. But as somebody who works in media and is working, you know, with. I'm working with my agents on a book deal situation on my own. So I've been kind of exploring that. That world a little bit more, and I'm like, wow, this is this is important. This is a landmark case.

[Podcast Interviewer]

It's the first time, correct me if I'm wrong, the first time a Big Five publisher cut ties with an author over suspected AI use. Is that right?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah, the first time one of the Big five. Yeah. I mean, that we know of. I mean, as you know, as we'll probably get into later on, there's been cases where AI detection tools detect AI use and then you can, you know, submit like, like proposals or something that combats it and submit inquiries. But it's the first time that. Yeah. So publicly like the same day that that article dropped, they dropped her.

[Bridget Todd]

So Mia Ballard is a black woman horror author. She self published a novel called Shy Girl. That novel was acquired by the big publisher Hachette, though not before some early controversy. The COVID art on the self published version of her novel had been taken from another artist without credit or permission. Hachette, her publishing company, was aware of this and the image had to be replaced. Even while the book had good to mixed reviews on Goodreads earlier this year, readers on social media started to speculate whether or not this book was AI generated. The popular YouTube channel Frankie's Shelf made an almost three hour video called I Think this is AI Slob that over 1 million people watched, pointing out what Frankie saw as the hallmarks of AI generated text. This is when Max Spiro, the founder and CEO of Pangram, an AI detection program, tweeted that he had heard about the claims around Shy Girl and decided to run a test of the full text using his proprietary software. He said the results indicated that the book was 78% AI generated. The new York Times published a piece about it on March 19th. The Times also analyzed passages from the novel using two other AI detection tools, GPT0 and Originality AI. These tools reported finding recurring patterns characteristic of AI generated text, things like gaps in logic, excessive use of melodramatic adjectives, and an over reliance on the rule of three. When the Times reached out to Hachette Ballard's publisher, the company said they were pulling the book, making Shy Girl the first novel from a major publishing house to be canceled over AI use allegations. So what does the writer Mia Ballard say about all this?

[Podcast Interviewer]

Well, not much.

[Bridget Todd]

She's kept a very low profile since the first allegations started showing up on social media and didn't comment publicly until the New York Times reached out to her for comment. She told them that she did not use AI, but that an acquaintance that she worked with to edit the self published version could have used AI to Do it. She declined to say more because she said that she's pursuing legal action. So I was prepping an episode about this situation when I encountered Dre's reporting, specifically about the AI detection company at the center of all of it. Pangram. And that is when I realized this whole thing was a lot more complicated than I had first thought. Because the question is not whether or not Mia used AI. I don't know. And honestly, neither do you, neither does Hachette, and really, neither does the New York Times. What we do know is that a black woman lost her book deal based largely on the output of a detection tool that the person who flagged the story to the Times in the first place says should be used, quote, only for guidance, not as proof of guilt. But that didn't keep a major publisher, a major newspaper, and the entire Internet treating it like an incontrovertible truth. So, no, the real question to me is not about Mia Ballard and whether or not she used AI. It's about what the formal process of dealing with these kinds of AI allegations should look like and. And whether or not we're comfortable with this being the precedent. So to truly understand the shy girl situation, we have to tell that whole story.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

All of these landmark cases are going to serve as the larger outline for how we treat future cases, which is why it's so important that we are so specific about how, who, what, when, where, and why is involved and what it means. Because if there is no formal process in which this goes through, today, someone might think, oh, well, she deserved it. But tomorrow, if it's them or if it's someone else, and they didn't, you know, that becomes a really messy situation. And so, you know, it's been interesting. It's one of my only videos so far that I've seen on my YouTube channel that's gotten really mixed, you know, in the comments. Like, there are people who are very much, I think, black and white on the situation. And so I think that the asking for that nuance is. Is something that I'm hoping we can find ways to leverage. And in conversations like this, it feels

[Podcast Interviewer]

to me like we have a little bit of a crisis of trust and authenticity and accountability. And so audiences are, understandably, I think, very touchy and very tense about suspected AI use and conversations about, oh, did this person use AI? Because we're in this media landscape where

[Bridget Todd]

you don't know who to trust.

[Podcast Interviewer]

So I don't think audiences who are responding in a certain kind of way about AI are wrong. They're Right, we do have that. But exactly as you said to your point, the only conversation can't just be this writer used AI. They suck. Get them out of here. Make an example of them. Don't ask any questions of the structural issues at play.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah. And multiple things can be true at the same time. Right. And I think that my biggest point in this is that like, yes, absolutely. If you feel like, you know, to your point, if you feel as though your trust was, was, was broken with this kind of writing, I absolutely agree. But it's, it's in the same way we have like the fda, right. Or we have these systems in place so that you don't have to worry about each individual piece of chicken you're buying from the store as being, you know, not having salmonella. Not. You have these processes in place to make sure that you, the individual, aren't on a constant, on edge trust. What happened? Does this person use AI? Do they not. Does this chicken have salmonella in it? Does it not? You trust in the environment and the government that has created this structure that says, here are all the tests we do to make sure that you, the individual, can breathe easy knowing that you're buying chicken. It's not going to hurt you. And that's kind of what my point has been, is that companies like Hachette should have, for the multi billions of dollars that they make every year, should have a system in place. They went through months of editing this girl's book and if Goodreads was able to clock it within a few minutes, you have to think that an editor was able to. So then that bar, you know, brings up the question, well, who is held responsible when something like that is found? Absolutely. You know, if the author did wrong, that is on the author. But then that's a conversation that they should have, could have had and made the decision whether they want to go forward or not, rather than leaving now this on this public display of, you know, letting the Internet attack her from all corners. And then you look at other people who similarly have been caught using AI but then within a weekend it gets fixed. Like it just bring. It brings up the question, who is this really going to serve if we don't have those structures in place? It can't be Mia Ballard's fault. Just the same way it can't be always each individual artist's fault. We have to find a way that the system is going to work through this.

[Bridget Todd]

Let's take a quick break.

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[Bridget Todd]

And we're back. The New York Times spent weeks developing this story that accused Mia of using AI in her book Shy Girl. But what they didn't tell readers is who they were developing it with. They briefly quote Thad McElroy, who they describe as a publishing industry consultant. But according to McElroy's own blog post, he is not just a consultant. He says that he worked closely with the Times for over a month, answering their questions, even negotiating his own credit before that piece even ran. In his blog post called Shy the Background to the New York Times Story, he laments the fact that the Times didn't give him more credit for his role conceptualizing this piece, he writes, I brought the story to the paper and was assured that I would be credited as the source. That didn't happen. I've not had any follow up queries. Why would I have? My role in the story was apparently unimportant. And he's kind of right because if you've just read the Times piece, he's only quoted as an independent publishing consultant sounding the alarm. He is not identified as the person who brought the scoop to the Times or the person who worked with them over weeks to develop it. The Times does disclose very briefly that McElroy first learned about Shy Girl from an employee at Pangram. What they don't tell you is that employee at Pangram is a sales representative. Her job is to sell the exact product the Times later used as evidence in that same article. And the Times never disclosed that McElroy had a pre existing professional relationship with Pangram's CEO, the same company whose 78% figure sits at the heart of the Times own reporting. So the two sources the Times leaned on the most were not independent of each other. They were very much connected to each other and to this story long before they ever came to the paper.

[Podcast Interviewer]

When I was doing my initial sort of podcast run through of what happened, I did not feel like I had a clear read on the role that the New York Times played in all of this. And in their, one of their initial pieces, the Times, they wrote, quote. The Times also analyzed passages from the novel using several AI detection tools and found recurring patterns characteristic of AI generated texts like gaps in logic, excessive use of melodramatic adjectives, and the overreliance on the rule of three. And so when I read that, I thought, okay, well, I guess the New York Times did their own investigation and they feel confident in saying this was a. They think this was AI generated. Fine. The Times did not really do a very good job of explaining just how this story came to be the players involved. And when I learned that from your reporting, I was like, I, we have, I don't feel like we're being told the real story. It changes everything.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

It totally does. And to act as though, you know, it doesn't or it's like, well, it doesn't matter. She still admitted to using AI. Absolutely. But does this, is this not worrisome to anybody? Because if we ignore this level of it, then we are doing the lobbying for Tech Bros. For them. Because that's essentially what this felt like it appeared to be to me.

[Podcast Interviewer]

You describe this chain that starts with a Pangram sales employee who, who runs through a consultant with professional ties to Pangram and then ends with a scan produced by that same company, Pangram. Do I have that right?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yes. Yeah. Thad McElroy or McElroy. I'm not sure I pronounce the last name. But he was the one who brought this story, as we come to find out through his own essay to the Times. He was the one who had gotten a call from Pangram. And this is according to him in his very in depth essay, which is, is something that we can get into in a minute. But he got a call from this sales executive, this account executive, and was like, they talked about it. He brought the story to the Times. And yeah, the, the Times quoted, you know, McElroy goes on in an email to me and in his own essay of how he ran it through these other checkers and all that, the one that is linked in his or in the New York Times story is the one to that Pangram pen gram, X tweets or X Whatever you want to call it. X post. And so it's just a little curious how, you know, it goes from this. You know, got 2,000 views, like seven likes or something like that on X. And then now it's the centerpiece of this story, this company.

[Bridget Todd]

Max Spiro, who calls himself an AI slop janitor on Twitter, is the founder and chief executive of Pangram. He said he'd heard about the controversy back in January and that he ran his own test of the full text of the book. Just as a side note, according to the screenshot of his findings, it looks like he used a pirated copy of Shy Girl from a website called oceans of PDFs, a notoriously sketchy website that offers free downloads of copyrighted ebooks in PDF. Max said that his scan indicated the book was 78% AI generated. He tweeted his findings saying, I'm very confident that this is largely AI generated or very heavily AI assisted. That was back in January. His post honestly did not get a lot of traction until Thad McElroy, that friend of his, stepped in and packaged the entire thing for the Times with Pangram's AI detection services at the heart of it. Dre goes on to point out how none of this backstory made it into the New York Times article. The dots between Sparrow's original post on X and the huge, splashy viral media story that ended a young black author's career remained unconnected in that article.

[Podcast Interviewer]

So you were able to recreate this one from his public blog post describing it. And I will say in the blog post, I would describe it as almost kind of salty that he was not given more credit. He talks about how he worked with the reporter. I mean, it's like, I don't want to. Like, I feel like I'm being very generous. We'll link to the post and people can decide for themselves.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

He opens with it and closes with it.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yes.

[Bridget Todd]

And he's like, I worked with these

[Podcast Interviewer]

journalists for months on this story. Time and time again they told me that, like, I would be credited as a source and, like, it would make clear that this is a story that I had a big hand in. And he basically is like, oh, next time I do a story like this, I'm going to put it on my own website because it's not worth it to go through the Times and all of that. It's just really hard for me to not read that post and be like, this was somebody who was trying to make a name for themselves by. He. He specifically says he doesn't want to ambush this writer, but by I'm ambushing them, I guess that's how that's in my opinion, I feel like it is an ambush.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

He said throughout his blog he did not, he wanted to have a conversation with Mia, but he did not want to go through Hachette, which was the only way he could reach out to Mia because he didn't want to tip his shet off to the story that he was writing, which by definition kind of feels like an ambush. But yeah, and so he, you know, he said to me within the email as well that he's like, well, I do hope that you'll give me a chance to comment and set before you write any allegations, I'm like, oh, like this email that I'm sending right now is your chance to comment. Yeah, this is what, this is what you do. It's about, you know, as journalistic integrity. At least the way that I see it is it's not your role to have post publication debate management, but it's your role to give pre publication, you know, contact to give them a chance to, to speak. So he did not extend the same thing to Mia Ballard.

[Bridget Todd]

It seems, despite saying that he worked with the Times for over a month to build this story, that McElroy never once reached out to Mia Ballard. And according to Mia herself, the New York Times didn't contact her until the same day that their story about her ran. McElroy addressed this in his blog post, writing that he would have liked to interview Mia, but that going through Hachette would have tipped them off and compromised the scoop. So he made a choice. And the choice was the story over giving Mia any kind of chance to respond to these allegations. But what makes this reasoning hard for me to swallow is that when Dre was reached out to McElroy for comment on her own reporting, he asked Dre to give him a heads up before making any allegations so that he could respond. A courtesy he apparently felt entitled to for himself, but did not think that Mia Ballard deserved.

[Podcast Interviewer]

When I found out from your video you were in touch with Mia, and when I found out from that video that the first time the New York Times reached out to her, she says, was the day that the New York Times article went live, my jaw was dropped. I, I, I was, I, I cannot even fathom it. Right. So like with McElroy, if he is like, well, I don't want to reach out to Hachette because I don't want to tip them off on the story. I don't Love it. But okay, the New York Times, they know better. They know better than to the same day that your, that your story is going or they should. They should know better than to.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

You have to think like. So they. So one of two things either happened then. Either the New York Times did not get in contact once with Hachette until the day of their publishing, which would be weird to spend five weeks on a case that what Hachette did not get any heads up on or they did reach out to Hachette earlier than publication date and Hachette and them gave them some heads up where they were able to do a few things here and there with the contracts to then the day that it drops that Mia is taken by surprise. All of a sudden the contract is ready to be dropped. Lawyers are ready to fight it if there's any push. Like so one of two things happen in either way, it's kind of bullshit for Mia. Like that's. That sucks whether she used AI or she didn't use AI, that this is an ambush of an artist who did not get a chance to defend herself. And then the goal of somebody to then later on in their blog say, you know, in her shot, I think, you know, drew Mia under the bus and you know, did not give her a chance to defend herself. Nobody in this story, I apparently I'm the only one that got in contact with her. So it's like, this is kind of crazy.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yeah. And something else I found really telling about McElroy's explanation of what happened here is when he says, well, Mia, it's almost like, who is Mia Ballard? She doesn't really have a social media presence. I was able to find one kind of like sketchy website for an old book that doesn't work anymore. Basically blaming her for not having a big digital footprint and making herself more difficult, according to him, to get in contact with. But then you were able to get in contact with her just fine.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Well, yeah. And also think about it. He wrote his blog post, you know, maybe a few days after, after the, the New York Times article came out, she pulled down her social accounts because the hate she was getting, I'm sure was across the board. Like you have this brand new art like author who is new to this is going to get attacked from every corner and does not have the protection of this industry. That said, we will help you and protect you through this. And so like, I don't know how you can blame somebody like that for not being reachable. Of course she's scared and does not Want to be reached. And you know. Yeah, I just think that it's, it is pretty crazy. And Mia was very willing to chat with me. Obviously I will let her. She's going through her own stuff. But she, you know, my biggest thing was that, like, how are you doing? You know, because the opening of what she said to the Times was that her mental health has never been lower and, you know, she's now left to the wolves. And Hachette gets to walk away saying, we are just so, we love our artists, we're artist friendly and we always want to be. And so that's why we did this. When you. To me, this could not be a clearer distinction of how you feel about artists.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yeah. And it took this situation for one individual writer to be thrown to the wolves, as you say, for Hachette to come out and say, well, here's our expanded statement on AI. And part of me is thinking in 2026, like, it's wild to me that it took this situation for them to even put out a clarified statement about where they stand with AI. And that I think really speaks to your point of like, industries and big moneyed companies, private companies that make tons and tons of money and publishing is their thing, is their business, they are falling short. And that it is individual writers, whether they use AI or not, who are absorbing the impact of that.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

And it's where the conversation starts and always stops. And it's the same logic running all the way up to the federal level, which was, I think my, my bigger point in all of it that I hope gets across is that the White House framework that landed on Congress's desk the same day that the New York times published on March 30, March 19. And you know the facts that that same week the shy girl story broke recommends, you know, the AI training on copyright material be not treated as infringement, which is what part of that Congress framework was. And that no federal, you know, regulatory lobby or body be created and that the states be blocked if they try to create any of their own AI protections. I mean, all of it does, is show that, that the artist is always going to be the one held responsible. And you know, to, to be quite frank, in my opinion, whether an artist is a good writer, a bad writer, uses AI or doesn't use AI, have my own standard for which authors I read. And that is totally up to me in the same way it's totally up to anybody else. But my standard for buying a published book is going to be probably similar to that of other people. So that says, okay, we need to then turn to, you know, the people who are making the chicken and say, why is there salmonella in this chicken? That's not good. Your whole corporation makes too much money for the salmonella to be in this chicken.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yes, I, I'm so glad that you keep bringing it back to that federal legislation because I think that shows that we're just having the wrong conversation and that something is very wrong here in terms of who is expected to absorb the blowback when it comes to this kind of thing. And also, like you, I just can't accept that nobody got to the point where they thought something is up here. The fact that it didn't take long for this book to get clocked as perhaps parts of it being generated by AI on Goodreads and YouTube and Reddit. I just, I, I don't, I, I don't buy that this is the first that the publishing company heard of it.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Just as though I don't buy that the first time the New York Times reached out to either of them was the day of, I think Hachette probably. It seems to me it appears that they probably would have gotten a heads up. And yeah, it is just one cautionary tale of that bad process.

[Bridget Todd]

More after a quick break.

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[Bridget Todd]

Let's get right back into it. Mia may be the first person that we know about losing a book deal with one of the big publishers because of AI allegations. But she is far from the first person to face allegations like this. Because, believe it or not, Thad McElroy, that consultant that brought the allegations about Mia using AI to the Times in the first place also faced allegations of AI use in his own book. About eight months before any of this happened, Thad McElroy published a book called the AI Revolution in book Publishing. Ingram, the biggest book distributor in the country, flagged it and pulled it from distribution after their automated AI detection filters identified it as AI generated. But after Thad McElroy posted about the issue on LinkedIn, within hours a senior Ingram executive personally respond and offered to look into it. And by Monday his book was back. The normal appeals process at Ingraham takes up to 14 business days and according to authors who have been through it,

[Podcast Interviewer]

can stretch to months.

[Bridget Todd]

But Thad McElroy got it resolved over a weekend because somebody with power knew his name. He even publicly said at the time that he worried how many other authors might find themselves in a similar situation and whether or not our current systems were robust enough to protect them. Yet eight months later, he put a

[Podcast Interviewer]

debut black woman author in exactly that same position. And unfortunately for her, I guess nobody

[Bridget Todd]

with the right kind of power knew her name to step in.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

You look at somebody like, you know, the person who wrote the blog, Thad McElroy, who had the same thing happen to him in 2024, wrote a book about AI in publishing. And the, the people, the company that took that book out, they classified his as being AI written and, and he got his fixed in a weekend. One of the, one of the publishers or executives over at the company reached out and they were able to find, you know, some way over the course of, of a two day weekend to, to get it back on shelves by Monday, which I think speaks volumes.

[Podcast Interviewer]

When I was watching your video over the weekend, that was the revelation that floored me and I was, I was planning an episode where I was like, oh, like Dre's reporting on this has been so great. I'll cite Dre's reporting at that point of your video. I paused and I was like, I'm actually emailing Dre to come on the podcast because I was so floored. Yeah, the fact that he was able to just like post on LinkedIn, I think it was Ingram, like getting Ingram. Yeah, getting an Ingram executive to be like, we'll handle this. I think that really says it all. And you frame this as kind of one rule for important people and then one rule for everybody else. If you're important enough, the head of a book distributor will personally handle this in a couple of days and it'll be no problem if you're someone deemed

[Bridget Todd]

not important enough, perhaps because you're a

[Podcast Interviewer]

Black woman like Mia Ballard. It's like it's a completely different set of rules. And I'm curious, how do you see this as a structural disparity working in publishing?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

I think the race element of it plays a huge part. And you know, some of the pushback I think I've gotten from some people in my comment sections like, oh well, you know, excusing AI writing as being okay is, you know, does nothing to do with her race. And I just think, you know, in my opinion, first of all, we're not even having a discussion about whether this is okay or not to use AI. It's just about who absorbs the, you know, at the end of the day, who absorbs the, the fault of it. And I think that, you know, the publishing, the new publishing standards had the same thing. And I think how can you not at least ask the question of what played a role in this when you know, a 50 some year old white guy has the same thing happen to him and it gets fixed over a weekend. I think you have to ask yourself, you know, if, if this tool was the thing Pangram as being one of the reasons that the, the Hachette lets let Mia go, then you have to ask, well, what is this? What is this tool trained on? What are its biases? Because time and time again there are academic studies that prove that there are so many racial biases in those AI detection tools and and so forth. So yeah, I think that there, I think it's worth publicly questioning what is in place to protect authors who are either, you know, people of color or just new and emerging and you know, get and really be clear about what the structural bias there is because if it's made by, and if it's made by a tech bro, it's going to have some.

[Bridget Todd]

Now Max Spiro told the New York Times that Pangram has a false positive rate around 1 in 10,000. But independent research tells a very different story about AI detection tools. Broadly, no AI detection tool exceeds 85% accuracy across all models and accuracy drops below 50% for mixed or edited content, which is exactly what an edited book would be. Even Thad McElroy himself has written that these scores are not verdicts and that they should not be used alone in high stakes decisions.

[Podcast Interviewer]

A standard that it seems to me

[Bridget Todd]

he helped set and then ignored. These tools are also unreliable in a specific direction. Research has shown that they disproportionately flag text written by non native speakers as AI generated. With one Stanford study showing an average false positive rate of 61.3% for non native speakers because they're trained on standard American or British English. Anything outside of these norms is obviously more likely to get flagged. Now, I don't know if Mia Ballard is a non native English speaker.

[Podcast Interviewer]

She might not be.

[Bridget Todd]

So I don't know exactly how her writing registered against those biases, but what I do know is that a tool with documented racial and linguistic blind spots was used as the primary evidence to end a black woman's writing career. And she was not really given an opportunity to meaningfully defend herself. So regardless of whether she did or

[Podcast Interviewer]

did not use AI to write this

[Bridget Todd]

book, book, I have a big problem with that process. And I do not think that this should be the standard for what that process looks like.

[Podcast Interviewer]

I think the Times spoke to a computer scientist and professor at Stony Brook University about Pangram, and he was like, well, it can make mistakes. And he didn't work at Pangram, but he was like, I use this to determine whether things are not AI generated or not. It can make mistakes, but I still stand by it.

[Bridget Todd]

And I think it's important to note

[Podcast Interviewer]

that in my opinion, and I'm no computer scientist, but calling it mistakes isn't right. The real way to put that is like, it has been shown to be biased. It's biased against non native speakers or anybody that wasn't that anybody who did not who writes or speaks outside of a very specific training data that it was trained on that we know is biased.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

And so look at, look at the report and what it flags too. Like, it, it flags literally like as small as something that's like an apostrophe T and like a word that comes after it. Like, from what I just saw, it seems unrealistic. Somebody made a point in my comment section I want to bring up too really quick that said, you know, this, these tools, these AI tools are trained on us. So they're trained on our verbiage and our repetition of the way we speak. And then what? It's going to lean heavily in its weights more one way or the other. And then this thing is going to say, oh, this is bad, because this looks like it was AI generated based off of the training material is still us at the end of the day. So it's such a mind.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Like, yeah, I saw a. There was a op ed in the Times by an author whose name I'm blanking, where she said, the issue is not that I write like AI. AI writes like me. AI writes like us.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Exactly. And I think it's just Like, I, I think that the dignity of the author, me, somebody like Mia, if Mia was a more established author, somebody who, you know, had some more pull in the industry, they would have treated that conversation very differently than Mia finding out the same time the rest of the world that her contract is dissolved. They, good. They would not treat that McElroy that way. They would not treat, you know, a number of authors that way, but they're, they're going to treat Mia. And so I just think, yeah, it's worth taking into consideration every angle of this because we need to be very clear. If what we're asking and what I'm asking for is a framework of what actually needs to be a standard, you know, across the industry, then we have to be very clear about what that standard is and isn't. And, you know, those are hard conversations to have, but I think that they're important.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yes. And McElroy himself says that these detection reports should only be used, quote, only for guidance, not as proof of guilt, but in this case his own scan and, and these scans, that was the only proof that we have. Like, that was the, if you could, if, if you could even call it proof. Like that's what this entire conversation is built on.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

And then Mia, you know, said, well, you know, she admitted to a person or you know, an editor who came in at some point and, and used it and who knows if that's true or not. It could be one of those things that somebody was like, oh God, I'm scared now. Like, let's just put it on somebody else. Or it could have happened, it could, I don't know. But I think that most importantly the fact that, yeah, that, that this, you know, op ed by the New York Times was, seems to be the catalyst of that, you know, or it was, you know, maybe they saw some of the pushback and meaning in the Reddit threads and in some of these videos, like from Frankie and whatnot. They could have said, oh, this is getting bad press now we need a reason to drop it. Like there's too many unknowns, that they aren't forthcoming about what their internal process was. That to me says, well, I have a lot of distrust in his shed. Because if they're going to rely on, let's say they saw Frankie, you know, Frankie Shelf's video and on top of that the Pangram video or whatever, it just makes me wonder, well, what is your standard then, Hachette? Because you clearly you're not willing to back up what you said. This is a good book. We Want it under our name. We're going to start selling copies. Like, you didn't even come to bat for the fact that you, you know, Pan Graham used a. A stolen copy of a writer's book. Here you are in court with Google and OpenAI and all of these other companies fighting for your artists because you love artists. And one of your artists is now being. This is being waged against her. And I would have a lot more respect for a company who says, hey, yeah, we'll talk about that. But first of all, where'd you get that copy of. Of the book? Because you didn't buy it from us, and that's our author's work. So she owe. You owe her money for that. Like, that's somebody who protects their artists and then has enough dignity and respect for them to have a conversation, you know, between them to say, like, here's what we can and can't do for you. But, like, all the way that this unfolded just makes me really scared for future authors.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yeah, it is pretty ironic to be having this conversation about the use of AI and creative work. And then I think it was Max and his initial tweet or. Or post on X about this in the screenshot of the version of Shy Girl that he used for the scan. It's very clear that it's a pirated copy in the.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

In the headline itself.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Whether people. People are like, oh, I don't like these AI scanners. But, like, you know, Mia is still in the wrong. Like, right? But, like, right now, when we keep saying, like, okay, but this is. Just throw it away. We don't like the AI scanners. I'm focused on hating me. I'm like, you're doing some lobbying for this guy who is literally stealing copies of books and trying to make PR, like, campaigns out of them. Like, that sucks. Like. And yeah, it is. It is very ironic. And I would think that his shet being in these lawsuits would want to also, you know, go after every one of the people who, you know, come in between an author and their work. But apparently it seems as though it's only the, you know, high prize, like, big profile, you know, tech accountability. And then when it comes to the individual authors, like Mia Ballard, I guess she's just one of the few that has to, you know, absorb that impact

[Bridget Todd]

more after a quick break.

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[T Mobile Customer 1]

to ask this, but. Hey, did you download the trail map?

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[Bridget Todd]

Whoa.

[T Mobile Customer 1]

I don't trust my carrier that much.

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[Bridget Todd]

Let's get right back into it.

[Podcast Interviewer]

I know this is a little bit different because I think that he has a completely different publishing model and all of that. But when I was researching initially the Mia Ballard situation, it was around the same time that that memoirist James Frey was doing press for his newest book. And like you might remember, he wrote a memoir called A Million Little Pieces. That memoir was debunked. He went on Oprah like many, many years ago, and Oprah was like, why did you write a memoir full of lies? Well, he has a new book out and at times he has talked about how he has used AI in his writing. He's given inconsistent statements. But I was just struck by the fact that he was, you know, I think it was, I'm forgetting the outlet that called him this, but it was like the bad boy of right, of the literary bad boy is back. Right. He was getting like very glowing praise for his work and none of the sort of like, like, like scrutiny about whether or not this work was AI generated. Even after he publicly talked about the way that he uses AI in his creative writing. And it just was interesting to me. Who gets a witch hunt and who doesn't?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

It's not about race or women that we are making it about. We're making it about something completely separate. This is about AI integrity.

[T Mobile Customer 2]

Right.

[Podcast Interviewer]

And it's just not lost on me that the first person that we know of to lose a book deal with a big publisher is a black woman. It's just like that there are so few of us in publishing in general. We're already underrepresented. That can't be a coincidence.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah, it's worth examining and I'll keep saying that. And I think that there's a difference in making something the center of the story and Making it something that again, like this story has a lot of things we need to hold at once, which makes it a very difficult conversation. But the more difficult the conversation is, the more important it probably is to have. And that is one facet of it. And as a white woman looking at this, you know, I, I can say, I can look at this and say, I wonder if I would have had the same experience that Mia had. I wonder if Hachette would have reached out to me beforehand. Or I have agents. I wonder if they would have, you know, because I have agents protecting me. Like they would have reached out to them. Like there are so many different ways that this could again could have been handled and wasn't. And yeah, it just felt like something that is worth bringing up because it's always, it feels like people of color, communities of color, that whenever we have a new set of rules, a lack of rules, you know, law enforcement, whatever it is, it always gets tested there first. And then the first fall guys are always end up being. I mean, you look at the syphilis experiments, right? I mean like any of them, like, it's always people of color because their voices matter a little bit less than everybody else's. And then we had, we look back on it 20 years later and we're like, oh, that sucks how that happened. We never can let that happen again until it comes time for it. And then it's like, well, no, this is about this, not about that. Like it's about a lot of things.

[Podcast Interviewer]

I got the sense from your reporting that the major players who put pitched this story and you know, got it to the Times that they had been sniffing around the Internet for a book with allegations around being AI generated to get press for this company and this AI detection software. And then they found one in shy girl.

[Bridget Todd]

Is that also your sense?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

You know, I, I won't speculate too much on that, but what I will say is when I like. I'm looking at Pangram's website right now and I'm looking at how you have these huge universities like the University of Maryland and Stony Brook University using Pangram and you have these. You know, I think it's. It's worth stating that there is definitely. You've got the chat GPT zeros who are, you know, originality, AI, you know, Robert AI, whatever. All of these. They're all in a. In this year is going to. Is a huge tech. Like, you know, you either win or you lose, like make it or break it type year. This is a company who I see that has a lot to lose if they are not seen as the standard. And especially with all the competition out there. If you type in just AI checker, whatever, chat, GPT or the GPT0 is like one of the first ones that comes up. And so I think that there's a high competition for products to get in that, that spot. And then that's, that's all I'll say about that, is it? It shows a false positive rate that is, that has no third party like, you know, looking at if that's true or not. Even if like giving them the benefit of the doubt. What was it? One in 10,000 has that giving a false positive. I mean, I'm looking at the Mia Ballard's shy girl report and there is more than like a couple hundred points in that that are not, that were flagged as AI and clearly not. But you know, I think that they have a lot more to lose if they don't get ahead in this. And I think that it, it sure seems like it worked out in their favor, doesn't it?

[Podcast Interviewer]

It sure does.

[Bridget Todd]

Pangram's website features testimonials from individual customers who, who are affiliated with Stony Brook University and University of Maryland. But as far as I can tell, neither of those universities have an official contract with Pangram. Stony Brook uses an AI detection tool called Turnitin, which is popular among many universities. However, many large universities have actually banned faculty and staff from using AI detection tools specifically because of the problems with accuracy and false positives that DRE is describing. The list of universities that have turned away from AI detection tools includes mit, Yale, nyu, Berkeley, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Northwestern and many, many others. UT Austin has gone even further and strictly prohibited all third party AI detection software for evaluating any student work. And faculty are warned that even if they purchase such tools with their personal money, they can be held personally liable for damages to students if those students are falsely accused.

[Podcast Interviewer]

You put it well that. Let's just be clear. Pangram's business model depends on publishers believing that their AI detection and that AI detection in general is reliable and is consequential. And so setting aside the question of whether or not this specific author Mia used AI or not, I do think we should be asking about this incentive structure that is profiting from understandable AI panic. And that company is also supplying the evidence in these high profile AI cases where someone can, who doesn't have a lot of structural protection can lose everything.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

And the New York Times didn't even disclose that they have an existing relationship with McElroy or McElroy's existing relationship with Pancreme. I mean, I'm on Pangram's website and they have a whole subsection for, for publishing media, for universities, for law firms. So it they in each one of these facets for recruiters, they need to have a certain level of trust in that. And seeing all the talk online on these Reddit threads that were the first, arguably the first AI catchers of people who were like this seems like AI, they thought, oh great, here is a chance to do that. And the New York Times, you know, did not state at all like they have a pre existing relationship with McElroy. They made him seem like this independent third party. McElroy did not state his, you know, relationship with Max Sparrow, which he'd known for years, and that the first he had heard of this story like was from them until he wrote his block later. Like there were so many people that you have to ask what the reason behind this was. And regardless of how you feel about Mia Ballard, her writing or whether or not she used AI, the facts that media and tech are working this closely together should be very, very concerning to everybody, especially after the fact that Sam Altman just bought a media company. And so like tech is going after media for this reason, like this is how they're going to get more of the market. And so if we could just for a second chill on Mia Ballard and pivot over to these guys and say, what the hell are you doing? Like that would be great. I personally would just love that.

[Podcast Interviewer]

And I always make this point on the show that the standard that we give and the leeway that we give tech companies and the tech bros and tech leaders that run them is absurd. If other industries or other companies tried this, we would have something to say about it. If a pharmaceutical company, if their sales rep brought a story to a journalist at the Times and that story relied entirely on that same company's product as its key piece of evidence, we would call that what it is, a conflict of interest.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah, don't worry, McElroy put it through GPT0 though too. So it's like, it's kind of like having an independent third party investigator. Yeah. And the fact that the New York Times didn't, you have to assume they didn't either look closely at the the X post or they just did and they didn't care. But the fact that it said Oceans of PDF, you don't even have to click on the report, it says oceans of PDF right under the name. And oceans of PDF was one of the terms, I think, flagged over 2,000 times in the report as being AI generated. Like, you have to ask what. What was their reason for publishing the story? You know, and that's where I get into the question. And not an allegation, but the question of they have no reason to publish this other than did they get in touch with. With Hachette? And Hachette's, like, there's too much chatter going on about this book being AI. I don't know if we're going to really see a profit on it. Like, we thought, hey, New York Times, it would be great if we had, like, you have to ask, like. And that's where my brain immediately goes. And I hope that that's false and I would hope that Hachette would be more honest if you know about whether or not authors are hitting a mark or not. But, yeah, it just seems like there's a lot of people who had a lot to gain from. From this story. And the. In the New York Times still to this day, has not come forward with any additions. Anything.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, that was going to be. One of my questions is why do you think that nobody in this chain applied, I think the sort of, like, basic baseline standard of at least saying, like, hey, we have XYZ relationship with Pen Gram, we have XYZ relationship with McElroy. Do you think it's just a system where media and tech are kind of locked in together? They both have a lot to lose, so they're just sort of not applying what we would think of as, like, basic standards?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

You know, I. I don't know. And I can only speculate, you know, on it. I'll say that I would. The only reason I would think you wouldn't do that is because this is not about you or what you're publishing. This is about somebody else you're publishing on behalf of. And that's all. That's all I can think of is because if I were a journalist with my name on a story, I would think that I would. I would want as much information to be as accurate or, you know, to disclose as much of that as possible. Because if I wanted to have a real conversation about this, then that's what we should be having a real conversation about. And it just doesn't seem like that was the intention of this article. I don't know what the intention of this article was, but it does make me curious about why it was. Why it was written.

[Bridget Todd]

Yeah.

[Podcast Interviewer]

And the thing that you come back to a lot in your video that really stuck with me is it's really asking the question of who gets to set the standard and who is just expected to play by that standard that someone has set. Right. Like, it does seem to be like, there is one set of rules being established for one group of people and then a completely other set of rules being established for others. And it's just up to you to know who you are and what set of rules that you're meant to abide by.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, I've. I get a lot of messages nowadays from I don't think McElroy. McElroy is very happy with my article, but I think that the facts that I was asked to give them more decency than anybody else was given in this story about checking in to make sure that nobody's name was drugged through the mud speaks volumes as to what the expectations are from people who are used to having one set of treatment in this industry versus others who just have to deal with the results that were given and nobody gets to question it.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Well, Dre, he is a white guy. Like, of course you would want to give him this courtesy.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Like, I mean, it's not enough that I gave the courtesy of just clarifying, you know, his, his own story, but God forbid I use his own words in, in my investigation. Yeah, it is. It's one of those things that's infuriate as a just a woman. Like, it's infuriating how people want to talk over, you know, factual evidence because of what standard they're used to in this industry. And then on top of that, I can't imagine, like, being a woman of color where it's like, not only are we going to talk over you, but we're going to completely drag you name through the mud and you don't get a chance to respond. Here's our reaching out to you as the New York Times, the article publishes in one hour. Have good luck. Like, yeah, I cannot imagine the way that. The way that I would come for these people is beyond. And whether Mia does or doesn't is totally up to her. Like, it can be a very expensive process to go, you know, against companies like this. But she, I, you know, she knows very well that at the very least she had me behind her in that. And that sucks.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Yeah. I've been following the reaction, just the public, like, comments and stuff on, on your videos, on this, and a lot of people accuse you of, like, caping for me of being like, no, no, I like. And it's. And I guess My question is, why do you. It's clear to me that you're not saying it's okay or it's good that Mia used AI. It's clear to me that you're not saying, you know, AI in writing is good. Why do you think it's so hard for people to focus on the process, the larger kind of systemic questions that you are raising rather than this black and white, did Mia use AI or not Conversation?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

I think because it asks people, People to look beyond one truth at the same time. And I think that it's. It's really. It feels better to us and it feels more resolved to say bad guy, good guy, end of story. And as we know that that's in life, just not true in general. But, like, especially with a story like this, the people who do things that, that we don't agree with and, and are bad. Like, you know, her taking the, you know, another artist's painting for the COVID of her book, that, that's bad, you know, and a lot of some of the people that you mentioned, they brought that up as well as, like, she's got a history of stealing. Like, that I can agree with as bad, but in the same way that somebody, you know, tried for theft doesn't always deserve the death penalty. Like, that's. It's that same kind of conversation where it's like, could this standard have been higher from Hachette? Like, she could have left her book self published and we could have all chosen whether we want to support that kind of person or not, whether we want to buy the book. But now that Hachette pulled it off shelves, started remarketing stuff, she can't put that book back out as herself anymore. Like, Hachette's name is attached to it. There's gonna be all these legal issues if she does. So it feels as though, like, yeah, that they ruined something that we could have used our own money to vote on, but now they want also for us to, like, use our own money to vote on and also not have them be a part of the equation when, when that should have been the case. Yeah, I think it's just. I think people find it much easier to hold one truth, you know, as the main, you know, here's a villain, here's not. And it sucks because I would encourage people to learn to hold both of those because one day it's not going to be so black and white with you. And I would hope that you would give, you know, I would hope that other people give you somebody that they don't know that you are innocent until proven guilty rather than guilty until proven innocent kind of mentality. Because I think that once we switch to that, it. We get into a really dark place as a country.

[Podcast Interviewer]

You know, I don't have to like the idea that an author might use AI for their, for their book, but that doesn't. But I'm not going to let that personal feeling then have me cheerleading a bunch of tech bros who got together to essentially try to manufacture credibility for their AI detection tool that they benefit from that we already know is probably biased. They've done it in a really shady way that has been totally untransparent. Like, you don't have to like AI or be cheerleading the use of AI in writing to be like, well, I don't have to sign up for that.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah. Or to have like, you know, I personally don't like. I think it's distasteful for a CEO of a company who he calls himself, I think on X, the. The garbage man of AI Slop or like the janitor of AI Slope to, To post, you know, publicly on somebody else's post talking about AI Use to then like, you know, this report that's like, hey, here's what we found. Like, to me that's distasteful. Whether it's legal or not is beyond me, but I think that it speaks to this larger issue of the White House does not want to defend the people who are on the side of, of the, of this retaliation from tech companies. It's going to be on the. The tech company side. And that is a really big problem for me. And, and why I think more than anything, if we really love artists and we really care about artists the way we say we do, we need to be standing up for what their rights are. A. Rights to being, you know, innocent until proven guilty, all of those things. And whether you personally think she's guilty or not based off of what you've read, based off what you've seen, that is your right. But she has the right to, to not have this happen the way that it did. And I, that's. That's. Yeah, I. My core thesis here because like, I didn't read the book. I've seen the passages that people have put out and like, may maybe they are AI, maybe they aren't. But that is like the. The least of my worries in this conversation.

[Podcast Interviewer]

What do you think this entire saga tells us about how prepared or perhaps unprepared major publishers are when it comes to actually investigating these accusations? Rather than just reacting to them.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

I think it tells us that our country is woefully unprepared for AI at all, without any regulations or guardrails. And I think it shows that our. On a legislative level, because we have this, this administration saying that we want states not to be able to have laws. We want everybody to have to just go by what the federal, you know, open. You know, it's an open market. Anybody who wants to do anything can. I think it shows. It speaks to beyond publishers. It speaks to, you know, filmmaking. It speaks to any artistic endeavor. It speaks to employment in general. We don't have a standard for how H R. A lot of HR is the first to get automated in these companies. And HR is like, you know, we've seen the stories from Amazon where they go through resumes and they automatically, if somebody's a woman, they assume less experience than if somebody's a man. Like, it speaks to, as a country, how woefully unprepared for this we are. And until we actively fight back, it's going to be the people at the bottom of this food chain that we've created in this country that are going to be the ones who reap these, these results. And then one day it's going to happen to the wrong person, the wrong person who has money and establishment and whatever that. Then we change the rule. And I'm just trying to get ahead of that before we. How many other people have to lose careers before we come to that conclusion?

[Podcast Interviewer]

You know, I walked away from reading your piece and watching your video feeling like, as you say, like our window for regulation in a meaningful way is kind of quickly closing. Are you worried about this? Like, are you worried that we're going to do nothing and then we're just going to be left with this, like, horrible system?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Yeah, I'm worried that we're. It's the same rules of war, right? Where it's like, well, in times of war, we allow for anything on that on behalf of national security to happen, and we'll clean it up later. And I'm worried that that is exactly what we're doing with AI where it's like, let's cut the red tape. Let's do anything that we need to do now, and whatever happens, we'll clean it up later. And like, cleaning things up later always takes longer. It always affects more people. And it, and it worries me immensely. And I, I, for, for one time in our country's history, if we could not, you know, rely on janitors of AI, Sloth and we could, you know, worry about, about the people who are constructing these buildings or, you know, the people who are putting out these pieces of meat to get ahead of all this illness. This is about to come our way. That, yeah, that makes me very worried, which is why I think being loud about this is important and why podcasts like yours who, who want to talk about this is really important because a lot of people aren't willing to have this conversation because it is very difficult. And it, and it makes, it asks a lot of questions of yourself and of a government who is not prepared to answer it. But that doesn't mean we should be any quieter about it here.

[Bridget Todd]

Here. You know, one of my last questions

[Podcast Interviewer]

for you is you don't have a newsroom, you don't have a consulting firm. You are one person putting ticket, putting things together on substack and on YouTube. Yet by far and away, you are doing the most in depth reporting, following of threads, turning this into like a real tech accountability story. Why do you think it like, where, where is everybody else? How did you get ahead of this? And how are you just as one person doing this kind of deep dive, reporting that institutions should be doing that have more resources than you, but are not doing well?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

I think it, our what we want out of it, I think differs for me from institutional media. I don't have to answer to anybody, but, but me and my audience. And yeah, I mean, look, every generation needs a good dossier, which is why the DRE dossier exists. But as somebody who's worked in media, you know, I used to work in Hollywood and then has worked on the tech startup side for a little bit. I've seen a lot of different angles of how people talk about this stuff. And tech accountability is more than just, you know, taking Sam Altman to court. It's on every level of, of every person who this affects. We treat that story with the gravity that, that it deserves. And you know, when stories like this get out, I can see very quickly, you know, the Internet can take an angle and spin it very fast, which is we make room for that conversation. But it's more of my. The DRE dossier is meant to make room for the conversation that brings it to this federal level. Because at the end of the day, until that changes, everything that come is the waterfall after that is going to be tainted in the same way it is the dam that's broken and that we have to rebuild in order to fix any of this. And so I'm just going to try to keep bringing that conversation up there where I can. And in the meantime we are all allowed to have our own opinions about it. But just remember that it is this executive branch that until something changes there, everybody else is going to have like a firing squad at them and we have to change that.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Where can folks follow the dre dossier? Probably one substack on YouTube. All the places.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Just as you said on substack on YouTube. It's free to subscribe, always will be. And yeah, I'm also trying to be better about uploading to Spotify, but like, don't really love being on Spotify, so go to YouTube and substack to find me. And yeah, I'm on Instagram Dre dossier. It's the same across the board. TikTok wherever you can. And I'll keep reporting on this stuff. And I'm working on currently a a case for protecting our healthcare and our data that goes into that healthcare right now against the current Department of Defense use of it. So please follow along if you would like to keep an eye on all of that.

[Podcast Interviewer]

Come back and talk about that anytime. You're always really at this very important intersection of tech and power and policy and culture. So important.

[Bridget Todd]

Any final thoughts you'd like to leave folks with?

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

If it bothers you that race is brought into this as a conversation, I would say ask yourself where that comes from and do internal work there and then maybe we can all have this larger conversation with it. That is the only thing I'll leave with.

[Podcast Interviewer]

I think that's a great place to leave it. Dre, thank you so much for being here. I cannot tell you how much I

[Bridget Todd]

appreciate you and your work.

[Dre of the Dre Dossier]

Bridget. Listen, it's only because of you that voices like mine get amplified. So thank you.

[Bridget Todd]

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach [e-mail] youm can also find transcripts for today's [e-mail] There are no Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

[Podcast Interviewer]

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