A ‘New York Times’ critic used AI to write his book review. But criticism is deeply human
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An author and freelance journalist has admitted to using AI to help him write a book review for the New York Times.
Alex Preston’s review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s novel Watching Over Her, published by the New York Times in January 2026, draws phrases and full paragraphs from Christobel Kent’s Guardian review. The “error” was brought to light by a reader, who alerted the New York Times to the similarities.
Preston told the Guardian he is “hugely embarrassed” and “made a huge mistake”.
The Times promptly dropped Preston, calling his “reliance on AI and his use of unattributed work by another writer” a “clear violation of the Times’s standards”. An editor’s note now precedes the review online, advising readers of the issue and providing a link to the Guardian review.
Preston’s apology to the Guardian raises more questions than it resolves. The portion quoted online seems to speak more to the issue of unattributed work than to his use of AI. It reads: “I 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.” This implies that if he had removed the “overlapping” language, the issue would have been avoided.
As a literary critic and scholar, I believe the deeper question isn’t whether or...