Macmillan threw a party for workplace AI assistant NOA, then killed it

WIRED reports that Macmillan launched an AI assistant called NOA from German vendor Chaptr in January 2024 with balloons and doughnuts, only to see it sunset in October 2025. Staff describe the tool as unreliable, and the publisher is now experimenting with Google Gemini.

WIRED

Open source

Macmillan threw a party for workplace AI assistant NOA, then killed it

NOA stood for No Ordinary Assistant and was built by Chaptr, backed by Macmillan parent Holtzbrinck
Staff were told to paste only a percentage of authors' manuscripts into NOA
Chaptr announced it would sunset NOA in October 2025
Gemini-generated evaluations of literary agents' submissions were called useless by an editor

#Macmillan#Chaptr#Google#Gemini

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