Writer Coral Hart defends 370 AI-written books despite threats
Coral Hart, a South African author who uses a pseudonym, says she has received tens of thousands of hate messages and several death threats. She says she has sold more than one million books and earned more than $1 million this year.
Hart says she has published more than 370 books since February 2025 with artificial intelligence (AI). She describes her method as AI-generated drafts, then AI edits, then a human proofread. She says a first draft is generally not good, so she runs it through AI for developmental edits and continuity fixes.
Hart says she worked in publishing for 14 years before she began writing with AI about 20 months ago. Her operation has trained several hundred people in her method. She says AI models have improved vastly since last year.
She says different tools suit different tasks. In her view, ChatGPT is good at dialogue but poor at prose, and Claude is good at story structure. She says critics of AI books are wrong and that readers return poor books.
Hart said she chose to go public to start a debate. She also pointed to Thelyson Orelien, a Haitian-Canadian author whose novel was withdrawn from the Goncourt prize shortlist after accusations of AI use. Hart says critics had praised that book and that its sales were strong before the controversy.
Key facts
- Who
- Coral Hart (South African author (pseudonym) who writes books using AI); Thelyson Orelien (Haitian-Canadian author whose novel was withdrawn from the Goncourt prize…)
- What
- In an AFP interview, Coral Hart defended her use of AI to write more than 370 books, saying she has received tens of thousands of hate messages and several death threats. She describes her process as AI-generated drafts followed by AI edits and a human proofread.
- When
- 23 October 2026
- Where
- South Africa
- Status
- Reported