If you write books the way I do, and you get them published through a traditional publisher the way I do, a fair amount of criticism will come your way. Yes, the anonymous internet has made bluntness, and even rude harshness, much more common and acceptable. I once received a very negative review by a reader who picked up one of my books, thinking — because of its title — it was going to be a dystopian fantasy. When it turned out to be realistic literary fiction — the reviewer gave it a very negative review. That’s to say, her disappointment was my fault. That said, over the years I’ve got far more positive responses than negative ones, for which I’m very grateful.
Yes, the very negative reviews can be painful, but I try to learn from them. [The great bulk of my very negative reviews come from young people who have been required (forced) to read one of my books for school.]
Recently, however, I received a resoundingly negative review unlike any I ever received before: It was an accusation that I didn’t write the book at all, that it was created by Artificial Intelligence, AI.
First off, the claim that I didn’t write the book is nonsense. But, that critical review speaks, I think, to the well-found jitters people have about AI, a fear of being duped.
I have no doubt that books will be (and probably already have) been created by AI. So it was with considerable interest that I learned that the Author’s Guild (the primary professional association for writers in the United States) has created a “Human Authored Certification Program.”
The Guild writes: “The Human Authored certification mark may be used by authors and publishers who wish to distinguish their human-written books from the glut of AI-generated books already saturating the marketplace. We believe that book consumers have the right to know whether a book they are purchasing or borrowing from a library was written by a human or was generated using AI. The Authors Guild looks to whether the text itself was generated by AI or a human in its definition of ‘Human Authored’.”
I am not sure how I feel about this. If I am looking at an image that is presumed to be news-worthy, I would like to know if it was AI- generated. The same for an audio recording of someone presumably talking. One of my sons, a musician, tells me that almost all music that is released commercially has been (to some degree) altered electronically, and has been for a long time. He says he can always tell. I can’t.
But what if I step into a bookstore and I see some books with the Authors Guild’s Human Authored Certification Mark on them; will that mean that all those other books (The Oz Books, for instance) that don’t have the mark mean they were created by AI?
Will libraries have to go through their shelves and retrospectively mark all books (say, Treasure Island) by way of telling patrons that yes, Robert Louis Stevenson did write that book all by himself. Readers, I think, rarely check the copyright date.
Will I have to register some eighty publications I have created over the years by way of stating that I did indeed write them?
So, I think the Authors Guild has this notification system backward. It should be suggesting that it is the AI-created books that be labeled as such. We should always be informed when creativity has been by a machine, or is computer generated.
I like to think I’ll know a robot when I meet one. We have come to a strange point in our history when humans must wear a label to assert they are human.
2 thoughts on “Human Authored”
TRUTH!
Thanks for this post, Avi. You are absolutely right that it would be preferable if AI-generated content was labelled. The Authors Guild has worked with Congress since 2023 to get legislation that would require AI generated content to be labelled. We also requested Amazon to require identification of AI generated books, and they did start requiring anyone posting books to disclose to them if a books was AI-generated (as opposed to AI-assisted), but they have never made that information public, and refuse to do so (they say they do not believe it is reliable). Failing labelling AI-generated content, some members asked us to introduce a Human Authored certification that they could use for books they wrote without AI. I don’t think using it creates a presumption that everything else is AI-generated. Meanwhile, we continue to push for legislation to require AI labeling!
We appreciate any suggestions you or others have for providing useful tools and protections for authors.
Mary Rasenberger
CEO, The Authors Guild