Times Drops Critic After AI-Generated Review Copies Guardian Piece
Freelance journalist Alex Preston admitted to using AI to write a book review for The New York Times in January 2026, which drew phrases and full paragraphs from a review by Christobel Kent in The Guardian. A reader spotted the similarities and alerted the Times.
The Times terminated its relationship with Preston, calling his "reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer" a violation of its standards. An editor's note now precedes the review online, linking to Kent's Guardian piece.
Preston told The Guardian he was "hugely embarrassed" and "made a huge mistake." His explanation, however, raises questions about his understanding of the breach. He said he used an AI tool on a draft review and "failed to identify and remove overlapping language from another review that the AI dropped in."
The phrasing suggests Preston viewed the problem as unattributed overlap that could have been fixed through editing. It sidesteps a larger question: whether critics should use AI for reviews at all.
The Work of Criticism
Criticism isn't summarization or repackaging. It's active participation in a conversation about art. A review doesn't exist in isolation-it sits alongside every other review of the same work, every other review the critic has written, and the broader critical discourse.
AI tools generate text by pattern-matching across existing writing. They excel at synthesis and recombination. But criticism requires the critic's distinct voice, judgment, and engagement with the work itself.
When a tool pulls language from existing reviews-whether intentionally or not-it collapses that conversation. The critic's role becomes invisible. Readers can't distinguish between the critic's original thinking and recycled analysis.
The Preston case shows what happens when AI handles the drafting stage. But the underlying issue persists even when writers claim to use AI only as a starting point or editing tool. If the foundation isn't the critic's own thinking, no amount of revision recovers it.
For writers in journalism and criticism, the question isn't how to use AI more carefully. It's whether the tool is suited to the work at all.
Learn more about AI for Writers and how Generative AI and LLM systems work to better understand their limitations for critical work.
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