AI books: How to tell a book wasn’t written by a human author

Libraries and bookstores are avoiding AI books but they are becoming common in online marketplaces. Photo / 123rf

As libraries and bookstores continue to grapple with how to handle books written by artificial intelligence, experts say there may still be ways to tell the humans from the bots.

Most public library services currently avoid providing AI books, but would be open to doing so in the future if there is public demand.

However, Newstalk ZB has confirmed some councils have unknowingly purchased AI books, which have then been returned to publishers.

The national body representing bookstores – Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand – said selling AI books was “against everything we do”.

But it said it operates on a “high trust model”, relying on publishers to sell books that are written by humans.

The Authors Guild in the United States said online marketplaces were becoming inundated with entirely AI-generated books that looked and read as if they were written by humans.

Tauranga Libraries manager Joanna Thomas said there were many tell-tale signs a book may have been written by AI.

These included “author names that do not appear elsewhere or seem auto-generated” and “authors that produce multiple books in a short time”.

Other factors included “low quality production, content that is repetitive and lacks depth or coherence, and overly generic titles”.

A spokesperson for Dunedin Public Libraries said AI-generated work had been easy to identify but was becoming harder to spot as technology evolved.

“Clues to an AI-generated item can include the overall quality of the item and whether it is an AI-generated summary of an original non-fiction work,” they said.

“Authors who publish a lot of work at once, or in very quick succession, which can indicate possible AI assistance.”

Earlier this year, the US Authors Guild launched a Human-Authored Initiative to certify that books were written by humans, with AI only being used for spell-checking and research.

Guild chief executive Mary Rasenberger said the initiative wasn’t about rejecting technology, but allowing readers to enjoy the “uniquely human elements of storytelling”.

She said the certification system “connotes that the literary expression itself, with the unique human voice that every author brings to their writing, emanated from the human intellect”.

Michael Sergel is Newstalk ZB’s business reporter, covering the daily life of business and the business of daily life. He’s been covering business, politics, local government and consumer affairs for more than a decade.