370 books in 20 months: SA author defends her use of AI

South African author Coral Hart has published 371 books since February 2025 using AI models including ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, and says she has sold more than one million copies across digital, print and audio formats, earning over $1 million this year. Writing under a pseudonym, Hart has absorbed tens of thousands of hate messages and several death threats while becoming a public face of AI-assisted publishing, and she now leads an operation that has trained several hundred people in her method. Her workflow combines market research with AI-generated drafts, developmental edits and continuity fixes, followed by a human proofreader; one of her romance titles reached Amazon's top 100. She is preparing to launch software for AI authors called Authorythm. The debate matters because it pits rapid, market-driven output against traditional authorship as AI models steadily improve their prose. Watch whether Authorythm gains traction and whether retailers and readers move to label or separate AI-generated titles.