The internal nickname NOA stood for “No Ordinary Assistant,” a label that many human assistants at Macmillan found offensive. An internal memo announced the AI chatbot as a product of the German firm Chaptr, whose ownership includes Macmillan’s parent Holtzbrinck. The announcement emphasized that NOA operated in a closed-loop environment, assuring staff that proprietary information would not be transmitted to external parties or used for model training.
During an early in-person training session a Chaptr representative told employees that the company understood the publishing world’s focus on content, a comment that some staff recalled as missing the point of literature. Later in 2024, an internal email urged workers to feed NOA a custom prompt that would draft performance-review goals. Multiple employees described the output as terrible, unreliable and ultimately unused.
In October 2025 a company-wide message announced that Chaptr would sunset the NOA service. Following the announcement, Macmillan leaders began exploring integration of Google’s Gemini model into editorial workflows. Some editors experimented with using Gemini to assess literary-agent submission letters, but one editor reported that the AI-generated evaluations were useless. Staff described the transition as tentative and lacking clear guidance.
Kelly Collins, Macmillan’s vice president of communications and community, told WIRED that the publisher employs Gemini for business purposes but has issued no directive to apply it to any publishing function, including agent-letter reviews. Collins also claimed that the details shared by staff about NOA’s rollout were inaccurate, though she declined to specify which elements were incorrect.
Macmillan’s experience mirrors a broader push across the Big Five publishers to adopt generative AI tools, even as the same companies pursue litigation against AI developers for alleged copyright violations. Hachette, Penguin Random House and other divisions have encouraged staff to experiment with platforms such as ChatGPT Enterprise, yet many employees report avoiding the technology because it hampers their workflow. Some managers have explicitly prohibited AI use for creative tasks like publicity copy and cover design, creating confusion about permissible applications.
A number of bestselling authors have voiced concern that undisclosed AI use erodes trust between writers and publishers. Interviewed writers have asked for clear disclosure of any AI involvement and for an industry-wide set of principles governing its use. Some authors, such as Mo Ryan, have publicly considered self-publishing, while fantasy author Brandon Sanderson raised millions through a Kickstarter campaign to fund independent releases after working with a Macmillan imprint.