It has come to our attention that an author we have contracted to publish has been suspected of using generative AI in their work. As is clear in our submission and publication guidelines, we do not allow for stories that have deployed generative AI in any part of their development.

This is never an easy challenge to face, but we are committed to ensuring that our backers’ money is going only to human-made work but also that we are not disqualifying human-made work without doing our own due diligence.

We firmly believe that an author-first approach requires publishers to make their own evaluation, case-by-case, based in human interactions and human judgement. Only then can we ourselves ensure that cultural differences, language barriers, and other elements that disproportionately affect marginalized writers are properly accounted for. Our goal with Common Bonds is to elevate aro stories and voices, and we simply can’t do that if we aren’t first considering how to best protect those who entrust their work to us. It would be a failure to our commitment to marginalized authors to not specifically acknowledge and account for the way fear around ai can incite witch hunts that disproportionally affect Black, neurodivergent, and Global South-based writers, especially.

We are already figuring out next steps and how to proceed, and we ask that our community gives us time to approach this with the care that is needed to ensure the least harm. Thanks so much for all your support, and we’ll return to you with a clear and transparent decision in the future.

Common Bonds Team