Illustration by Matt Kenyon / Ikon Images Readers are getting suspicious about AI. So I asked over 30 book editors how they were dealing with the problem of AI-generated book submissions. It took considerable labour to track these editors down in the first place. Most email addresses were hidden from the public, so I tried to reverse-engineer them, making forensic alterations whenever an “unsent” message came through. I tried LinkedIn. I tried company websites, which had become labyrinthine after years of corporate mergers.  In the end, none of them would tell me anything. It was difficult to blame them for staying quiet. Any admission would have led to even more blame, the kind they were already getting in spades on social media. They were taking audiences and advances from the deserving. They were destroying trust. And they were gatekeeping, but not doing so very well.…