{"text":[[{"start":6.8,"text":"Earlier this year, author Steven Rosenbaum took a phone call that turned his world upside down. The book he had spent three years researching and writing, he was informed, contained quotations fabricated by AI tools."}],[{"start":20.68,"text":"“When I learnt there were factual inaccuracies in The Future of Truth, my first reaction was: that’s impossible,” Rosenbaum tells the FT two months after the discovery. “It had gone through a traditional publishing process with multiple rounds of editing and review.”"}],[{"start":36.56,"text":"Rosenbaum had been clear about the use of AI tools in his nonfiction book — ironically, a study of the future of truth and technology — but had used them only to research and organise material, including summarising source documents and interviews."}],[{"start":51.56,"text":"“What I failed to recognise was that, in some cases, it transformed those summaries into what appeared to be direct quotations,” he says. “The danger isn’t that AI writes bad prose. The danger is that it writes persuasive prose attached to facts that never existed.”"}],[{"start":67.28,"text":"The rapid development of AI is changing the way the $140bn publishing industry commissions, edits and distributes books. Unauthorised use of copyrighted material by AI companies has also become a crucial concern. Last week, Anthropic agreed a $1.5bn settlement with authors and publishers after using over 480,000 published works to train its large language models without payment or permission."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":94.16,"text":"But it is also the deployment of the technology in the very creation of literature, and the threat that AI could replace human authors, that is worrying publishing — a business that has operated in similar ways for decades if not centuries."}],[{"start":107.08,"text":"The book trade is deeply split over how to handle a technology that some publishers and authors vow not to touch but which others identify as a huge opportunity that is already changing reading and listening habits."}],[{"start":119.32,"text":"“Every week we see a book that we suspect involves AI,” says one senior book executive. “The grey area between generic writing and AI writing is difficult to judge. We don’t know how much we unknowingly publish.”"}],[{"start":131.56,"text":"Agents say they too are being swamped with AI-generated prose. “We see it show up in people that are submitting books to us,” says Christy Fletcher, co-head of UTA Publishing, who represents authors such as Daniel Mason and Eric Ries."}],[{"start":145.64,"text":"“It’s really transparent. You now have to train yourself to ask: does this read like it was written by [Anthropic chatbot] Claude?”"}],[{"start":154.04,"text":"In March, Hachette, the French publisher, was forced to pull Shy Girl, a horror novel by Mia Ballard, from the shelves in the UK and cancel its US launch following allegations it had been partly written by AI. Ballard has denied the claim."}],[{"start":169.24,"text":"The novel had built up a following as a self-published book before being picked up by Hachette. “Everyone liked it,” says one book executive. “After Shy Girl, every editor is nervous.”"}],[{"start":180.28,"text":"Even now, Ballard’s book has an average of over three stars on Good Reads, a book reviews website. One author, talking off the record, voices the industry’s ultimate fear: “What everyone is really afraid of is that the audience might not care.”"}],[{"start":195.52,"text":"‘Hallucinations aren’t typing mistakes’"}],[{"start":197.92,"text":"Executives at other publishers say it is just a matter of time before they are hit by a Rosenbaum or Ballard-type scandal and are scrambling to try to set rules as the technology advances."}],[{"start":208.36,"text":"“AI has seeped into absolutely every nook and cranny of software,” says Madeline McIntosh, co-founder and chief executive of the independent publishing house Authors Equity and a former US boss of Penguin Random House."}],[{"start":221.04,"text":"“Unless what you are saying is ‘you may only use pen and paper’, the fact is you are touching AI — and AI is touching your work,” she adds."}],[{"start":229.84,"text":"Existing guidance from publishers to authors broadly suggests that AI can be used to assist the creative process — researching, fact-checking and sometimes even editing and refining — but not used to actually generate copy."}],[{"start":242.72,"text":"But the extent to which AI can assist in writing a book varies depending on the publisher, the editor and the agent. “There are many, many shades of grey at this point,” says McIntosh."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":251.68,"text":"Fletcher describes a “schism”, especially between fiction, where there is “more dogma” over AI use, and non-fiction, where its value for research is often prized."}],[{"start":261.84,"text":"“What level of AI use is acceptable?” asks another executive in the sector. “What does research constitute? What does ‘written with AI’ mean? What percentage needs to be written if so? It’s a slippery slope.”"}],[{"start":273.92,"text":"Even among authors, there are divergent views. “We’ve got 12,500 members, and each of them is going to have slightly different red lines,” says Anna Ganley, chief executive of the UK’s Society of Authors."}],[{"start":285.84,"text":"Publishers are now inserting AI clauses into contracts. Pan Macmillan says its standard contracts require authors to guarantee the work is entirely their own, original and human-authored, which also ensures copyright is protected."}],[{"start":299.36,"text":"“If an author or illustrator wants to experiment with new AI tools, we’re completely open to having a conversation about how to do that responsibly,” says a spokesperson for the publisher."}],[{"start":310.04,"text":"That might include using AI to aid research, check facts, edit grammar, polish text, summarise source material or speed up the writing process. But the author’s “judgment, voice and intellectual responsibility must remain at the heart of the book”. It has provided guidance for its editors on how to spot possible AI use, and as yet no book has failed to pass its tests."}],[{"start":333.2,"text":"Bloomsbury also prohibits the use of generative AI in its publications, though its policy for authors says AI “may offer helpful solutions in some contexts, particularly when used to support, rather than replace, human creativity”."}],[{"start":347.48,"text":"Others are taking a more hardline approach. Microcosm Publishing, a Portland-based independent publisher and distributor, says that its AI policy is “no, thank you . . . not even spelling and grammar edits. Not reading level. Not continuity, and not fact-checking. Not adding citations. These apps will do far more than you ask them to.”"}],[{"start":367.28,"text":"Rosenbaum is painfully aware of this risk of AI mission creep. “Hallucinations aren’t typing mistakes,” he says of the perception by an LLM of a pattern or object that does not actually exist."}],[{"start":378.56,"text":"“They’re authoritative-sounding inventions. That’s a completely different editorial challenge . . . leaving authors and publishers to shoulder the responsibility for detecting hallucinations after the fact.”"}],[{"start":389.74,"text":"The AI doom loop"}],[{"start":391.12,"text":"Many in the industry believe they can detect AI writing. But executives admit that with careful editing, an experienced writer could still pass off AI prose as their own."}],[{"start":400.78,"text":"Poor style on its own is not enough to identify AI usage. “Lots of books are badly written,” one executive shrugs, adding that the inadvertent tiny imperfections and deliberate creative breaking of the rules are what can make people feel the humanity behind the writing."}],[{"start":416.36,"text":"Some even worry about a doom loop for future generations, in which younger readers become so accustomed to reading AI-generated copy, with all its flaws, that they start to write in that style too."}],[{"start":427.56,"text":"Publishers have deployed AI-detecting technology but are generally dissatisfied with the results. “We have tried AI-testing tools but don’t always use them. The threat is seen as enough for now and they aren’t very good,” one chief executive of a publisher says."}],[{"start":442.66,"text":"The Authors Guild in the US has warned that it would be a material contract breach to cancel a contract or pull a book from sale on the basis of accusations or use of detection tools alone."}],[{"start":454.76,"text":"Given the difficulties in defining rules and policing them, and the risk of errors, McIntosh of Authors Equity says transparency has become key to the conversations that they are now having with authors."}],[{"start":465.64,"text":"“In our contract, we and the author both need to disclose to each other what our use of AI was,” she says. “If an author has used AI to help support their research for a nonfiction book, that’s fine. But I want to know that they did, because that means that we now need together to apply another layer of human research to make sure that the facts are actually true.”"}],[{"start":486.24,"text":"UTA’s Fletcher says that her author clients often want reassurances about how AI is being used by publishers, particularly that “editing is not using AI, cover design is not using AI”."}],[{"start":497.5,"text":"She adds: “They really care that . . . it’s not being handed over to software.”"}],[{"start":501.12,"text":"Pan Macmillan says editors can use secure AI tools to quickly summarise a long manuscript, list character details or pull out strong quotes to help pitch a book. They cannot use it for editing or deciding what to accept or reject."}],[{"start":514.28,"text":"Many publishers also consider AI useful in sales and marketing tasks, such as automatically refreshing metadata so that books appear more prominently online, and in the printing and warehousing processes."}],[{"start":525.88,"text":"Bonnier Books has run author and agent roundtables on AI in an effort to find collective solutions. “The only way through possibly the greatest transition the industry has seen in modern times is open conversations,” says Sarah Posner, publishing innovation manager at Bonnier’s UK arm. “We need to work together.”"}],[{"start":526.38,"text":"Chatbots vs books"}],[{"start":546.88,"text":"The challenges of AI extend beyond determining who or what wrote a book. The technology is also beginning to change what readers buy and how publishers operate."}],[{"start":555.96,"text":"Sales of more functional non-fiction books in areas such as self-help, cooking, biography and finance are being hit as more people turn to chatbots for practical advice."}],[{"start":566.22,"text":"Non-fiction sales fell 6 per cent last year in the UK alone, according to Nielsen data. While this relates to a variety of issues, including the popularity of podcasts and YouTube videos that cover similar topics, publishers think there is a direct correlation with the rise of chatbots."}],[{"start":582.32,"text":"“People will want to just parse a bestseller book,” says one senior executive. “They’ll ask ChatGPT ‘tell me all the things I need to know about [decluttering guru] Marie Kondo’.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":592.24,"text":"Another executive says certain non-fiction genres, such as history and true crime, skew towards male readers “and men also love ChatGPT”."}],[{"start":600.76,"text":"The result, according to industry executives, is an even greater need for authors such as Patrick Radden Keefe, whose brand of accessible investigative journalism has proved a hit with critics and readers."}],[{"start":612.52,"text":"“Where we’re seeing strength is people who have really strong singular voices, and those readers are identifying with those individuals,” says Fletcher, the agent."}],[{"start":619.86,"text":"Authors can also see the use of AI beginning to affect fiction categories. Nilanjana Roy, an FT Weekend columnist and author of The Wildings and The Hundred Names of Darkness, says it is “pointless trying to hold AI literature at bay”, adding that a “younger generation will experiment” and established writers such as Vauhini Vara and Rie Kudan “have already played with AI/LLMs to generate fairly fascinating texts”."}],[{"start":646.84,"text":"But she suggests that as large volumes of AI-enabled texts threaten to overwhelm agents, editors and publishers, “you have the ironic but also delicious prospect of an AI assistant sifting through AI manuscripts”."}],[{"start":660.8,"text":"The influence of AI is most visible in the self-publishing market, which is going through a boom that many publishers link to the use of tools that make writing a book much easier."}],[{"start":671.76,"text":"New books with ISBN numbers in the US rose by a third last year to over 4mn, with more than four-fifths of these self-published. Many such authors are able to use AI tools to generate a book a day with little use of their own creativity."}],[{"start":688,"text":"Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, the biggest self-publishing platform, asks its authors to self-report AI-generated content, but they are not required to disclose AI-assisted content."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":699.72,"text":"Amazon tells the FT that it “continues to enhance our protections against non-compliant content”, pointing to rules such as limiting the number of titles authors can create to 10 books per format each week. It takes “proactive and reactive measures to prevent, detect and remove content that violates . . . guidelines, whether AI-generated or not”."}],[{"start":721.24,"text":"AI-created synthetic voices can also be used to produce almost instant narrations of books for social media platforms, removing the need to buy and download an official audiobook, according to one top executive, who says synthetic voice tools are now so good that they can copy the voices of established authors, who would typically be asked to narrate their own novels for audiobooks."}],[{"start":721.74,"text":"‘Human authored’"}],[{"start":743.56,"text":"Trepidation about the impact of AI on publishing is not universal. Some sector executives believe that after an initial surge of AI-generated slop, there will be more demand for quality human writing."}],[{"start":756.44,"text":"“Books aren’t going anywhere,” says Posner, of Bonnier Books. “In fact, I see people reaching more and more for real human experiences.”"}],[{"start":765.08,"text":"The industry has survived a number of other disruptions, from self-publishing to ebooks, that were considered existential threats when they appeared. Tom Weldon, chief executive of Penguin Random House UK, part of the world’s largest English-language publishing group, says books have “proved remarkably resilient through every technological shift because they offer something unique”."}],[{"start":786.68,"text":"“AI can be powerful in supporting creatives in many ways, but should never replace the imagination, judgment and lived experience of an author,” he adds."}],[{"start":795.92,"text":"But there is now greater pressure on publishers to find what McIntosh of Authors Equity describes as the “work that is exceptional, not the lowest common denominator . . . because [what] AI does really, really well is the lowest common denominator”."}],[{"start":809.12,"text":"She refers to the “thumbprints of humanity” that make a book stand out, a concept being practically applied by publishers in the UK and US amid efforts to clearly label content as human or AI-assisted."}],[{"start":820.16,"text":"Ganley, of the Society of Authors, says transparency “is key, because whether it’s organic literature or AI-assisted literature or AI-generated literature, we think there should be upfront clear labelling so that then the consumer can decide what they want to purchase”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":836.08,"text":"Both the SoA and The Authors Guild in the US have launched kitemarking schemes that can be used on human work to distinguish it from AI-generated books."}],[{"start":844.04,"text":"Authors can register their books to use a “Human Authored” logo on their back cover, signifying only de minimis tinkering with text by AI such as spelling and grammar checks."}],[{"start":854.56,"text":"But Rosenbaum’s transparency about his use of AI as a tool made no difference to his book’s fate. He says that he is now working with a fact-checker to review the manuscript word by word before publishing a new version."}],[{"start":866.24,"text":"He notes that his experience has completely convinced him of the need for new “editorial safeguards for a world where AI is part of the publishing workflow”. But he adds that he is “not walking away from AI”."}],[{"start":878.04,"text":"The original version of this story implied Rosenbaum’s book carries a disclaimer that it was human-authored. It does not."}],[{"start":878.54,"text":"Letter in response:"}],[{"start":885.36,"text":"Books need provenance labelling too, just like food / From Alan Finkel, Executive Chairman, Proudly Human, and Former Chief Scientist, Australia; Melbourne, VIC, Australia"}],[{"start":900.8,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785545556_6745.mp3"}