So much for creativity and authenticity. Now you must ask yourself when you pick up a book, was this written by AI? How much of it was written by a human? Is it an original work? Copyright is a secondary issue. This story was from the ABC. I edited it for length.

Publishers are flooded with AI “slop” books, book deals are falling apart, and three literary prize winners so far this year being accused of using the technology.

Louise Doughty, a judge on the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize whose winner was accused of AI use, thinks so.

“We’re only at the beginning of understanding the depth of that threat, and how we can combat it.”

ABC Radio National’s Critics Corner spoke to Matthew Rubery, professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University, trying to answer this big question plaguing some readers.

He said individual readers could still broadly discern whether a text was AI-generated, through “tells” including: “It’s not X, it’s Y” constructions

But Dr Rubery said the signs of AI usage “change a lot” and it was “very tough to keep up with it”.

One potential solution to the issue is a “human-authored” certification.

Many certification schemes are gaining traction around the world, using a range of methods including interviewing the author, asking for their edit history and using AI tools to analyse their work.

Beyond the issue of writers bearing the cost of relieving readers’ uncertainty around AI, Ms Doughty expressed concern about the emerging trend of using AI tools to detect AI-generated writing.

She said the tools were used to level accusations at this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner, despite the prize’s own investigations finding the winning work was human-authored.

“It’s important for the industry to be aware of and guard against frivolous or malicious accusations of AI being used to derail a writer’s career,” she said.

(Malcolm King: unless the work WAS generated by AI)

She said the accusation “will always be easier to level at new authors” who did not have a body of work that AI tools could refer to, producing false positives and degrading reader trust.

“Absolutely, we must not end up with books written by AI, but we must also view AI diagnostic tools with the same level of scepticism,” she said.

Groups like the Australian Publishers Association say the government should enact laws requiring the disclosure of AI use in texts, among other improvements.

However, there are fears that the government is going the other way, favouring the interests of tech companies over authors and publishers.

A proposal leaked last month revealed the government was considering watering down copyright law to create an “opt-out” system where tech companies could train their AI models on authored work without permission until rights holders told them to stop. 

“AI companies seeking an opt-out model are asking government to reverse a basic principle: if you want to use someone else’s work, you should first seek permission,” Hachette Australia and New Zealand head Louise Stark said while fronting up to the committee.

“An opt-out model shifts the burden onto the very people whose rights should be protected.”

Tech companies have already scraped vast amounts of authored work in what a Microsoft executive termed “the largest theft of labour in human history”.

The ASA also cited a UK report which found 86 per cent of authors surveyed reported a drop in income due to generative AI.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, author of The Uncaged Sky, attributes a drop in income to AI-generated summaries and knock-offs of her memoir posted online.

“If someone wanted to read a condensed version of my book in a couple of hours without paying for it, they could listen to this instead,” she said.

“Each time a reader watches or listens to such a clip rather than reading or listening to my book is a sale I lose and royalties I don’t receive.”

Leaked government documents reveal AI companies would be allowed to train their models on online content without paying its creators as long as they struck deals with enough rights holders.

A crackdown on copyright would put more legal pressure on publishers to ensure their writers were not using AI.

“For copyright to subsist it must be created by a human author,” Australian Copyright Council CEO Eileeen Camilleri said.

She said using an AI spell-checker or editor would not void an author’s copyright, but “where you put in a prompt and get it to generate … copyright is unlikely to subsist”.

If an author has used AI and it is discovered after their book’s release, the publisher may not be able to sell it exclusively.

As a result, publishers have become more vigilant about the work in their submissions inboxes — from updating author contracts and applying for human-authored certifications to getting cold feet about publishing new writers.

The Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence’s final report is due on November 30.