Last fall, Antonio Bricio, an engineering consultant who lives in Guadalajara, Mexico, finished a draft of his first novel, a sci-fi thriller about a government conspiracy to bury the history of humanity\u2019s first contact with alien refugees.<\/p>\n
After querying 20 literary agents and getting a string of rejections, he spent several months furiously revising it in hopes of one day landing a publisher.<\/p>\n
Now, Bricio worries that the already taxing process of getting a publishing deal as a debut author has become even more fraught. He fears that agents and publishers will avoid taking risks on unknown authors over concerns that they might have written the book using artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
The panic and paranoia over AI-generated books exploded in March when a major publisher, Hachette, decided to cancel the release of a horror novel, \u201cShy Girl,\u201d by Mia Ballard, in the United States over evidence suggesting that it had been produced partly by AI. Hachette also pulled the book in the United Kingdom, where it released \u201cShy Girl\u201d last year after Ballard initially self-published it.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
When Bricio learned on social media about the cancellation, his stomach dropped. He said he does not use AI to write, except to occasionally translate a stray word or phrase from his native Spanish into English, in which he is also fluent, using the AI translation program DeepL. But he wondered what an AI detector would say about his work.<\/p>\n
So he paid for a subscription to Originality.ai and uploaded a chapter of his novel. The detector was 100% confident that he had used AI in some way.<\/p>\n
Bricio searched for the phrases that had tripped up the detector, deleted some sentences and reran it. This time, the program said it was 100% certain that a human had written it. Eventually, Bricio had a chat with a customer service representative, who told him that if he received results that incorrectly flagged his work as AI-generated, he might need a different model of the program.<\/p>\n
The back and forth only left Bricio more unsettled. The Originality.ai reports on his draft, which he shared with The New York Times, showed that adding or deleting even just a few sentences produced wildly different results.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if publishers or agents start running these AI tools on everybody?\u201d Bricio said. \u201cEverybody is going to walk on eggshells from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the publishing industry wrestles with the intrusion of AI into nearly every aspect of the business, there seems to be little consensus over what publishers can or should do to regulate how writers use the technology. But many agree that the current state of affairs is untenable.<\/p>\n
A growing number of writers face unfounded suspicions of AI use. Others use AI without disclosing it. Many readers feel confused and wary, not knowing whether the books they\u2019re reading were written by a human or a machine.<\/p>\n
Quite a few self-published authors have been called out for obvious AI use and pilloried by readers and fellow writers as a result. But the \u201cShy Girl\u201d controversy could prove to be a turning point for the entire book business.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the novel\u2019s cancellation, many readers and authors questioned how a major publishing company failed to catch signs of AI writing. Commenters on Goodreads and Reddit had complained for months about what they called obvious evidence of chatbot language. The scandal has prompted some readers to question how much publishing houses vet the work they acquire.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re reaching this era of distrust, with no easy way to prove the veracity of your own writing,\u201d said Andrea Bartz, a thriller writer who was a lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit brought by authors against Anthropic, which agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement.<\/p>\n
Bartz recently put some of her own writing into Ace, an AI checker, and was startled when the program labeled her work as 82% AI-generated. The program then offered her a solution: \u201cWould you like to humanize your text?\u201d<\/p>\n
When Bartz wrote about her experience on Substack, dozens of writers chimed in. \u201cI guess that\u2019s what happens when your books were stolen to program AI,\u201d novelist Rene Denfeld commented, noting that an AI detection program had also falsely determined some of her writing to be AI-generated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got to be a wake-up call for the industry,\u201d said Jane Friedman, a publishing consultant.<\/p>\n
Most major publishing houses don\u2019t have clear-cut rules around AI use for authors, operating instead on trust and the expectation that writers will be transparent. But with the many ways AI is seeping into book creation, from research to editing to composing sentences, there is confusion over which forms of AI use cross a line \u2014 and a heightened fear that AI writing can, and will, steal past professional editors.<\/p>\n
When Rachel Louise Atkin, who reviews books on Goodreads, Instagram and TikTok for thousands of followers, first heard about \u201cShy Girl\u201d on social media, it sounded like a book she would love \u2014 a gripping and twisted feminist horror story. She devoured the book in a day and recommended it widely. She said she was shocked to learn that it had been pulled over evidence of AI use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I knew for definite that something was written with AI, I would have avoided it,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we should be able to make the choice if we want to read something that was written with AI or not.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Authors, meanwhile, often feel threatened from all sides. The ever increasing number of books published each year, including those written with AI, makes it more difficult for writers to find an audience in a fractured and oversaturated entertainment marketplace. On top of that, authors who steer clear of AI now feel pressure to prove their human bona fides \u2014 with no great options for doing so short of livestreaming as they type.<\/p>\n
Some writers are adding a logo to their books and websites that says \u201chuman authored.\u201d The certification, offered by the Authors Guild, allows authors to attest that they wrote their books without using AI to generate or substantially shape prose. While the guild does not independently verify authors\u2019 claims, writers may be subject to trademark violation suits if they violate the logo\u2019s terms of use.<\/p>\n
A.M. Dunnewin, a self-published author of horror novels, registered for the certification and put the symbol on her website: \u201cI thought, maybe having that certificate could be a safety net, letting people know that it\u2019s my work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarina Bowen, an author who has self-published some books and released others with major publishers, was accused of using AI to create the cover for one of her novels. It was a charge she easily refuted; the novel was published years before generative AI went mainstream. But now, she worries about the cover art she gets online \u2014 a fairly common practice among self-published authors \u2014 and whether an artist might have used AI to produce it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know where we go from here, but that moment when I was accused of having an AI cover was really a downer,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone who publishes books is swimming in this world where we can\u2019t be sure of the origin of our content.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, she said, \u201cI\u2019m really not looking forward to the day when readers can\u2019t tell the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Readers who picked up \u201cShy Girl\u201d were among the first to spot signs of AI generation in its pages, and they clearly didn\u2019t like it. Some writers said they found that encouraging.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are going to spend money on a book, they want it to come from the author\u2019s brain and heart and not a computer that\u2019s robbed the writer\u2019s brain,\u201d said Laura Taylor Namey, who writes young adult fiction. \u201cI applaud that.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
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