Authors dumped from New Zealand's top book prize after AI used in cover designs (www.theguardian.com)

Two leading New Zealand authors, Stephanie Johnson and Elizabeth Smither, were disqualified from consideration for the 2026 Ockham Book Awards after the awards trust ruled their book covers had been created using artificial intelligence. The books—Johnson’s Obligate Carnivore and Smither’s Angel Train—had been submitted in October but removed under amended AI-use guidelines put in place in August, after covers had already been designed. Their publisher and the authors say neither had meaningful input on cover creation, and both covers (one featuring a cat with human teeth, the other a steam train with an angel evoking Chagall) were the result of designers’ work rather than the authors’ text. The trust says it must apply the criteria uniformly to protect writers’ and illustrators’ creative and copyright interests. The case highlights practical and policy challenges for the AI/ML community and creative industries: how to define and detect “AI use” in mixed workflows, where tools ranging from image-generation models to AI-enabled features in Photoshop or Grammarly blur authorship lines. It exposes timing problems—rules implemented after production—and the risk of penalizing authors for design choices they didn’t make. Organizers signal the criteria may be revisited as AI evolves, while publishers call for clearer, industry-wide guidelines to avoid unfair exclusions and to protect designers’ efforts.