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Steven Rosenbaum started writing his book The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality in 2022, around when ChatGPT launched. Initially he didn\u2019t use it at all, \u201cBut as the writing moved forward into 2023, 2024, it got better and I got better at using it,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be clear, it never wrote a page of the book,\u201d he added. \u201cBut it became a research partner. I would ask it for quotes on certain things, and it would deliver them. They would occasionally be spectacular, often serviceable, and then, in very odd ways, just staggeringly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept thinking, I\u2019ll be really careful, and I\u2019ll double-check everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In May, the New York Times reported<\/a> that Rosenbaum had included \u201cmore than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes\u201d in the book seemingly generated by AI. Rosenbaum, a media entrepreneur, had previously acknowledged that he\u2019d used AI tools during the research, writing, and editing process, but the Times investigation was nevertheless mortifying \u2014 for both Rosenbaum and his publisher, Simon & Schuster. The book-publishing industry had already been wrestling with the prospect of a flood of AI-authored texts in the fiction market, and now the Rosenbaum scandal was showing the way AI could blow a hole in the nonfiction sector, too.<\/p>\n Nonfiction publishing is uniquely vulnerable to AI because the industry has long\u00a0neglected to do anything to ensure the books it publishes are factually accurate. \u201cPeople outside of the industry don\u2019t understand that, contractually, publishers are not obligated to fact-check,\u201d said Paul Bogaards, the longtime marketing and publicity executive at Knopf who now has his own PR firm. Fact-checking is not a service publishers will pay for, though they sometimes encourage authors to seek it out on their own dime. But fact-checking is expensive: Hiring an outside checker can cost between $7,000 to $10,000 per book, or even more depending on its length, which might not be feasible for an author with a modest advance.<\/p>\n Worse, it seems publishers have no idea what to do about this glaring vulnerability. \u201cWe don\u2019t have systems in place,\u201d said literary agent Alia Hanna Habib. \u201cFor every contract, there is a conversation, and it never really feels like anyone has the right answer,\u201d said one editor at a major publishing house.<\/p>\n Editors, writers, and agents say the problem is likely already rampant. \u201cI feel like everyone is passing off AI work as their own and most of the time don\u2019t say anything about it,\u201d said a senior nonfiction editor at a major publishing house. \u201cI brought this up last year because I had been finding so many errors in the books that I was editing. I have just been told over and over again that the publisher can\u2019t take on the responsibility of fact-checking or hiring a freelance fact-checker because that shifts the responsibility onto us.\u201d<\/p>\n Asserted Rosenbaum, \u201cAnyone who is a working writer today who sits in front of a computer, either doing longform or on deadline or at magazines, whatever the cadence of your work is, you\u2019re using AI one way or another at least in part because it is not only seductive as hell but it\u2019s really incredibly valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot of writers would beg to differ with that statement. But it does point to the fact that there is no industrywide standard on what AI usage, if any, is acceptable even as everyone I spoke to seems to agree that guardrails are necessary. \u201cA lot of authors are well intentioned in their use of AI and don\u2019t want to rely on AI to generate work that they would then present as their own,\u201d said Todd Shuster, co-founder of the literary agency Aevitas. \u201cBut they might rely on AI for some research or ideas around the structure of the book or outline. And the author then sort of forgets or denies or suppresses the extent to which they relied on the AI for such research. And before you know it it\u2019s not only that they\u2019ve looked to AI for assistance, they\u2019ve actually generated texts that they\u2019re including in their proposals or manuscripts.\u201d (New York does not allow writers or editors to use AI tools for drafting, outlining, or editing.)<\/p>\n Contracts contain clauses in which the author warrants, among other things, that they are the sole author of the work and that the work is original, indemnifying the publisher. \u201cBut as of now, most publishers don\u2019t have contractual language that\u2019s specific to AI concerns,\u201d said Habib. \u201cTherefore, when AI allegations are levied, you\u2019re in a kind of difficult spot. There\u2019s some contractual language around saying that something has to be an original work and against plagiarism, and I would say AI work would fail that test, but others might disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always felt that, despite my ethical holdups with AI, there should be a more in-depth conversation on what things it absolutely shouldn\u2019t be allowed to be involved with,\u201d said one editor at a major publishing house. \u201cNobody seems willing to have that conversation.\u201d An editor at another publishing house said their company sends authors a guide about not using AI in certain ways, \u201cBut it\u2019s not legally binding. Once you\u2019re at the editing stage, this is basically a business of trust.\u201d<\/p>\n Agents, too, are in an ambiguous position. \u201cPeople are saying, \u2018Oh, what if we just have the writer declare that they haven\u2019t used AI?\u2019 That\u2019s a slippery slope, because what is the legal recourse for that?\u201d said one literary agent. \u201cAnd if they used it just for research, is that fine? Theoretically, that\u2019s how Rosenbaum used it, but that still led to hallucinations and inaccuracies.\u201d<\/p>\n At the Gernert Company, literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb said they have \u201ctalked about putting something on the submissions page of our website that we do not represent work in which AI has been used to generate the text, in whole or in part. But we\u2019re not asking people to sign an affidavit when they submit their manuscript, and, unfortunately, shame is not the deterrent it should be.\u201d Some agents and editors are keeping this front of mind as they sign new clients, spending more time vetting writers for their human expertise. \u201cIf I\u2019m getting you a six-figure book advance, I don\u2019t want you to be putting it into ChatGPT,\u201d said a top literary agent. \u201cGo to the fucking library.\u201d<\/p>\n Multiple people noted that a fact-checker would almost certainly have caught the fabricated and misattributed quotes in Rosenbaum\u2019s book, some only a Google search away. Rosenbaum said his book had three rounds of proofreading but that he did not hire a fact-checker, something that \u201cwas never suggested to me by the publisher,\u201d he said. (He has since personally hired two fact-checkers, who are working on a new version of the book.) He added that the Times article \u201csounds like the book is rife with errors and in fact if you count them, it\u2019s five, and of the five, one is a citation error. So it\u2019s four, which my guess in nonfiction is below the average. But I wrote a book about truth, and I got four things wrong, and the Times wrote about it, so I\u2019m going to be the poster boy for now.\u201d<\/p>\n Even full transparency about AI usage could pose a problem. \u201cMy belief is that unless there\u2019s full disclosure of this, it\u2019s improper. And even when there\u2019s full disclosure, there\u2019s the risk that you as an author, if you\u2019re including AI-generated content, are actually engaging in copyright infringement, because the LLMs often spew out significant amounts of prose that are verbatim copies of prior published work,\u201d said Shuster. \u201cIf those works aren\u2019t in the public domain, the defense of fair use is flimsy if not inapposite. These are the challenges facing us.\u201d<\/p>\n AI-detection tools have become more effective over the years but are still not<\/a> entirely<\/a> reliable<\/a> in their assessments, sometimes mistaking human writing for computer-generated work. \u201cAs a representative for authors, I really worry about the prospect of false positives,\u201d said Parris-Lamb. Still, \u201cThere\u2019s increased openness\u201d to these tools, said Shuster, who has been consulting for Pangram, a start-up whose namesake AI-detection tool purports to be 99.98 percent accurate. Shuster has been introducing publishers and other companies to the software. \u201cI don\u2019t know how feasible it is to just run every manuscript through one of these programs,\u201d said Parris-Lamb. \u201cIt\u2019s probably still going to be something that\u2019s done when suspicions are raised.\u201d<\/p>\n And \u201canything that costs money, publishing is allergic to,\u201d one literary agent noted. \u201cAs usual, I think the onus is going to fall on the authors and agents.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Intelligencer\u00a0Newsletter<\/p>\n Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n