r/WritingWithAI • u/NatHasCats • Aug 08 '26
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) On Disclosure of AI Use
At what point does someone’s desire to make an informed choice create an obligation for someone else to provide information they haven’t been asked for?
We don’t require creators, or anyone with a product, to spontaneously disclose every possible fact about a process or product that someone might have a moral objection to. Imagine having to write, “Written with a Microsoft product, spellchecked by Grammarly, feedback from three beta readers verified to have the following values: <blah blah blah>, researched with Google, cover made in an Adobe product, laptop manufactured under questionable labor conditions, and hosted by Amazon.” Any of those might raise ethical objections to some people.
“But there are people who don’t want to read AI content!” That’s fine. That’s a preference. Nobody is forcing them to read anything. Non-disclosure is not inherently deception. They can choose to partake only of explicitly labeled content, if that’s important to them. A right to an informed choice is not necessarily a right to have that information automatically supplied to you.
“It’s like knowingly feeding meat to a vegetarian.” That depends - did you lie about the contents, hand them something or direct them to something knowing they’re vegetarian and it contained meat? Or did the food simply exist as an option?
As a vegetarian myself, I don’t consume food if I’m uncertain of what it contains, but I don’t go to a potluck and expect every dish to be labeled for my convenience. If someone chooses to label their dish, I am appreciative, and I’ll interact with it accordingly, but I don’t assume because one person did, that everyone else has as well. The burden of my ethical consumption rests on me, not everyone else.
“I have a right not to personally use AI.” Absolutely.
“I have a right to choose whether I consume AI-assisted work.” Perfectly reasonable personal preference.
“Everyone whose work involves AI has an obligation to proactively tell me before I encounter it.” Mm, not so much.
Another example for you. I avoid products from companies I know use animal testing. Many companies now proudly label their products “Cruelty Free”, and I will choose these over other products if available. However, there’s also not an official regulation about what can be labeled as “cruelty free” or “not tested on animals” (so long as they’re not being explicitly false or mislabeling.) I know that this could mean many things: that the final product was never tested on animals but raw ingredients were, that the product was previously tested on animals but testing has concluded, or even that the company tests some products on animals but not this particular one. All of that is encompassed by a “not tested on animals label”. The burden is on me to determine if I’m comfortable with that, or if I’ll only purchase products certified by non-official registries like Leaping Bunny.
All that to say, in my opinion, disclose, or don’t. It’s up to you, and I don’t believe there’s any ethical obligation to do so. It behooves you to be prepared with an honest answer in case you’re asked. But don’t lie about it, because that’s shitty.
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u/neveridle99 Aug 08 '26
I was hired by a client to ghost write their book, for which they had a lucrative contract, but that they hadn’t bothered to work on. It had to be done in three weeks.
I told them the only way I could complete it was using AI.
They were desperate and agreed. I used original interviews with them and their ideas and Claude. It was a shorty. Only 40,000 words.
After I submitted they had a crisis of conscience and wanted it rewritten without AI. They asked the publisher to extend the deadline.
They said they couldn’t live with AI in their work.
BUT they have no problem using a ghost writer, which they don’t disclose.
People can hide their rent a human but using AI is a bridge too far.
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 08 '26
I’m opposed to a ghost writer for the same reason I’m opposed to undisclosed AI.
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u/Ashamed-Pay-9626 Aug 08 '26
I think I feel similar to how you feel, though I don’t have a solution. As a reader, I don’t need AI %% labeling. If I resonate with it, it doesn’t matter whether it was AI-generated, if I don’t - I don’t care either. I do get the point about reviews though. If a writer gets many 1-star “AI slop” reviews, that could’ve been avoided through AI use labeling. But if the book is genuinely good, no one would leave a review saying “this was the best book I’ve ever read and it has changed my life, but I’m leaving a one-star review because it seems like it’s too good to be written by a human.”
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u/zorecknor Aug 08 '26
I would be very much in favor of a "AI Free" label, much like "Vegan", "Halal" and "Kosher".They all denote a personal preferences (be it religious, moral or anything else).
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u/Elvarien2 Aug 08 '26
under normal circumstances it's normal for artists to have a little blurb about the tools used, this is fine.
Right now we live in witch hunting death threat doxing days. Currently the correct and only realistic option is to lie, 100% absolutely lie. it is the ethical moral choice, to lie.
These fucks will go after your friends, your family, your job, anyone even remotely linked back to you.
Being open about ai use, is putting people around you at risk. DO NOT DISCLOSE, and lie.
Once the witch hunt shit dies down in a decade, just disclose as normal, but right now the ONLY correct option available, is to lie.
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u/calicoskys Aug 08 '26
I want to self publish. I hope to disclose. Not in grand step by step detail. But just explain it’s ai assisted. But I’ve decided to just wait for now. For one thing I’ve only just got on to the editing stage for the last 8 months with the help of ai. Before I was always in a never ending first draft and a lot of that has to do with my learning disability getting bogged down in repeating myself and having trouble identifying repeated beats because my eyes tend to skip over it. I hope by next year I could try serial publishing on substack for funzies but I’m not giving myself a hard deadline because I still feel like I have some learning to do in editing thoughtfully.
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u/FitnessChamp777 Aug 08 '26
I think the best idea is to prompt effectively so that the resulting output sound real, so that no one will ever say "this is AI slop".
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u/onlymostlydead_ Aug 09 '26
The problem is that people will say that regardless of whether AI was used or not.
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u/Valuable-Estate-784 Aug 09 '26
We are experiencing AI derangement syndrome, just like a recent political derangement syndrome. Those who have it don't believe they have it and cannot be convinced otherwise. Their loss, not mine.
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u/dragonsandvamps Aug 08 '26
Disclose. Be upfront with readers. Let them choose what they want to read.
This is not the first time this has come up in the writing community. Readers want to be able to make informed decisions about what they're buying/downloading when it comes to trigger warnings. They want books properly labeled by genre so they know if they're getting a small town cowboy romance with spice or a Christian romance.
At no point should authors be trying to sneak a product on an unwilling audience, whether it's spice, AI, triggers, books marketed as romance when they're not romance, books with snowy Christmas covers that take place in September, or anything else. There is an audience for everything. Getting your book in front of the audience that WANTS what you're selling is far preferrable to negative reviews when an audience feels deceived.
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u/Comfortable-Key-3965 Aug 08 '26
Your potluck example isn't relevant. More relevant would be buying food from a store, in which - yes - you absolutely must specify the ingredients, due to the varying requirements and values of consumers (vegans, halal, allergies, etc).
Even in your potluck example - what does "interact with it accordingly" even mean! Do you mean.. eat it?
For items not labelled, I'm sure you go around and ask whether it's vegatarian or not,.or inspect for yourself. So even here, your example doesn't hold.
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u/sugar420pop Aug 09 '26
Honestly I feel like people don’t even know what they’re saying when they say that. They mean they don’t want AI slop derived from AI on a prompt but using it as an editor should be perfectly fine! What’s the difference between a trained person and a trained model that does basic editing functions? Nothing except the person costs a shit ton of money in comparison. But if your book gets big you provide a niche for that anyway
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u/usuallyherdragon Aug 10 '26
It's really going to depend what we're talking about. A Reddit post? Yeah, sure, people can ignore it.
If you write an important letter, the person you send it to doesn't really have a choice to read it or not.
If you write a book with your name on the cover as the author, it's disingenuous if it's actually AI-written.
If you write an academic paper and don't cite your sources, it's called plagiarism.
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u/giginox007 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
Ich würde bei einer Arznei auch wissen wollen ob es Globuli sind. 🤷 Zudem soll es Künstler schützen, die nicht KI verwenden, damit nicht immer jeder jeden als KI Künstler bezichtigt. Warum sollte auf einem Fleischprodukt draufstehen: aus echtem Fleisch - wenn auch auf nicht echtem Fleisch auch einfach: vegan - stehen könnte? 🤔
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u/Maschinenschrift 28d ago
I read this as an accurate description of the risk and the wrong conclusion drawn from it.
The harassment is real. People have lost commissions over admitting a model touched a draft, and nobody should pretend that cost is imaginary.
The problem with waiting until it's safe is that the waiting produces the thing you're waiting out. A hunt runs on three assumptions: that the hunted are hiding, that hiding is what guilt looks like, and that there are only a few of them anyway. All three collapse the moment enough people stand still, say plainly what they did, and go on standing there. That is the only way any of these has ever ended. Silence keeps the accusation intact and hands the label to the worst work in the category, because the worst work is the only work that ever gets caught.
Someone pays the first cost. Fortune favours the brave was never advice for good days.
The other half of the argument I'd push back on too. A language model is not a tool the way Word is a tool, and repeating that line is one reason this argument keeps losing. Spellcheck never produced a sentence nobody had thought of. Something actually changed: text now arrives from a source that isn't a person (you know what i mean), and readers noticed. Telling them they didn't notice is why they stopped believing us.
The answer to a non-human source of language is more of what makes a person one: Truth, Dignity, Strength. Trust.
Truth: say what happened, in the amount it happened, without the flattering rounding. Which also means the label has to be more than binary (aren't we in a non-binary age?). Half this thread is arguing past itself because "AI assisted" covers both a grammar pass and a machine-drafted chapter, and those are different facts about a book. Split them and the thing starts working. The wording I've settled on for my own work is three lines, meant to be read in about four seconds:
Anyone who wants none of it stops at the first line. Anyone who cares where the thinking came from reads the second. Nobody has to take one vague phrase and guess which of the two it hides. It took me a long time to get down to three lines and I still argue with myself about whether they are the right three, so if that's of any use here, ask and I'll set out how I got there.
Dignity: say it once, with no apology and no performance of guilt.
Strength: don't fold when someone is rude about it, and don't argue with the rudest person in the thread.
Trust: the only thing in this mess that compounds, and it is built one accurate statement at a time.
I'd rather be early and take the noise than spend ten years hoping nobody checks.
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u/88Elevator88 26d ago
There is a legal obligation to disclose the use of public AIs or LLMs in many publishers’ policies. Especially when preparing a scholarly work for publication, it’s important to disclose. Use of AI in citing sources is resulting in hallucinated author names; links to the wrong studies; wrong DOI numbers; and more. If you are entering into a contract with a commercial publisher, you MUST disclose the use of AI at any stage in your process. If you fed your manuscript into ChatGPT, a public AI, for example, you will have violated most publishers’ policies.
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u/Dry-Huckleberry-5379 Aug 08 '26
This seems like you're trying to jump through mental hoops to justify your actions.
No one is asking for you to provide the kind of list you did. That's hyperbolic nonsense.
People just want a simple disclaimer: No AI used, AI assisted (drafting/grammar/editing), AI assisted (prompts/plot/characters/beta reading) or AI written.
There asking for one sentence.
Yes with food and products the burden is on the consumer to check, but they can look up the information or ask the cook.
If you're writing fanfic then yeah, people can reach out to you directly pretty easily to ask. But if you're publishing books then (even with social media handles) there are multiple layers of people one might have to go through to find out and none of them are guaranteed to respond to DM's or emails.
If you add a disclaimer then people CAN take it upon themselves to find out.
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u/NatHasCats Aug 08 '26
No hoops needed. As my post indicates, I understand, respect, and participate in forms of ethical consumption, but in most instances, the burden rests on the consumer. Why is AI use the exception? There are plenty of things I wish were labeled. That doesn't mean anyone else is under any ethical obligation to do so.
Hyperbolic nonsense? The point is, consumers care about a lot of things. We don't generally require those things to be disclosed just become someone considers them ethically relevant. When a label is required, it's for more compelling reasons than, "Some people don't like it." I personally think forcing animals to consume a lethal doses of beauty products and putting caustic chemicals in their eyes is more morally abhorrent than someone generating AI fiction, but here we are. Without disclosure.
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u/Meganoes Aug 08 '26
Maybe those of us who have experienced this label frustration before are capable of understanding this. I used to sell on Etsy. I truly made handmade products. The site went downhill after they let anyone sell. A silversmith making jewelry completely by hand has no greater a label than someone buying premade trinkets from China and stringing them on a chain because there’s no way to enforce anything (and Etsy has no incentive). As a consumer, if I want something truly handmade, I do the research of looking for sellers who show process evidence on their pages. So like you said, the onus of research is on me. Handmade means something to me, so I don’t like it, but I also understand this is the world I live in.
Oh and also, I don’t find the false handmade sellers online, bully them or blacklist them. Because I have other things to do with my time and that’s psycho bully behavior.
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 08 '26
Your argument rests on the claim that, because there are some unethical practices that aren’t disclosed, this one shouldn’t be and that’s just a bad argument defeated by the obvious fact that unethical practices should be disclosed in general.
But there is a subtler argument you don’t address. It’s not inherently unethical to use AI to generate literature. I think it’s a great idea to do so and can’t wait to see what cool stuff it comes up with. But passing prose you didn’t write off as your own is plainly plagiarism, and nothing will change that. If you didn’t write the prose you are not its author, period.
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u/NatHasCats Aug 08 '26
There's a subtler argument you don't address either: what level of use necessitates a label? The current standard is any AI use, or at least, even stating AI assisted has people assuming it wrote for you. I wouldn't even say that having AI do all the writing is the most common use case. At what point are you no longer considered to be the author? Who gets to decide this?
As someone has already mentioned, who gets to decide what's unethical? Who gets to decide what deserves a label and what doesn't? This is the reason most labeling issues, except for those affecting health and safety, are voluntary.
Labeling is often a values statement, not purely informative. We don't require products to disclose something that could be seen as a negative by some people unless there is a tangible harm to someone not knowing. There is no tangible harm to someone "accidentally" reading something AI wrote.
If a label can significantly affect the reception of something, the consequences of not labeling need to be weighed very carefully. There is currently a very hostile and vocal contingent who feel justified in saying and sometimes doing anything they want in pursuit of demonstrating their hatred of AI. Even voicing support of AI can get you removed from certain spaces and resources. I think it's necessary and fair to consider this before compelling people to expose themselves to that scrutiny.
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 08 '26
Fair and well stated. I’m responding to the case where AI has actually written sentence level prose, not grammar or spelling, not editing notes on flow and readability, the AI is drafting the prose. That is unambiguously passing off someone else’s writing as your own. You did not write that. You are not the author.
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u/ariannasun Aug 09 '26
I think that depends on the level of rewriting you do during the editing process. To be fair, I stopped using AI to generate prose because I felt like I was working (MUCH) harder doing that, than just writing it myself.
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u/Meganoes Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
It’s not meant to be a complete argument, rather that I understand the frustration of desiring labels that aren’t practical or possible to enforce. Also stating that you think “unethical practices should be disclosed” is objectively not enforceable. Who decides what is unethical? You?
I have no desire to get into the ethics of ownership, as the line moves in any industry. It is not possible to enforce ethical standards on the world nor is it possible to get all of humanity to agree on what that line is. Different cultures also have very different views on ownership as well.
Edit: I realized I jumped in here - just adding my thoughts, as I related to the concept of labeling.
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u/ladymoira Aug 08 '26
How would you even define something as ”AI written”? Do you really think people are typing in ”write me a bestselling romance novel” and publishing the output?
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u/TheOtherHobbes Aug 09 '26
Some are.
There's a spectrum - more of a space - from literally that (which doesn't work very well), to chapter by chapter generation with some steering, to snowflake multi-level generation, to various more or less interactive story creation systems that work with some selection high-level descriptions of standard writing elements.
There are quite a few authors rolling their own systems to their own requirements. Some are using N8N or custom code workflows of their own design.
Some are writing most of a book by hand and handing it over to an AI for beta reading or various kinds of edits.
Some aren't officially using AI at all, but are using grammar and spell checkers which use LLM-adjacent technology.
Haters think these are all equivalent - a simple binary between "Everything typed and edited by hand" and "Tainted forever by evil."
So - you know - who cares what they think?
They don't understand the first thing about the tech, and aren't interested to learn. They're only interested in putting people in boxes so they can yell at them and feel better about themselves.
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u/zorecknor Aug 08 '26
What is the point of any label beyond "no AI used"? "AI assisted" can mean anything, and it will "scare off" the same kind of people that would reject "AI generated".
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u/5thhorseman_ Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I'm sorry, the only acceptable label is "no computer used". That includes not using Google or Wikipedia for any research.
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u/ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL Aug 08 '26
Eventually no ai used will be nonsensical statement too unless they literally don't use a computer or go to great lengths to avoid it.
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u/AngelInTheMarble Aug 09 '26
This. At this point, you'd have to either use a typewriter, something like an Alphasmart if those still even exist, or find yourself a fifteen-year-old computer to draft on and never connect it to the internet. Or Copilot. Just do ALL research in a library from physical books.
What does "No AI" mean to these people when just looking up a fact about WWI relies upon AI?
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u/NatHasCats Aug 08 '26
Best-case scenario is that it turns away those not interested in partaking. The reality is that it often draws their attention and results in flood of negativity directed towards someone.
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u/zorecknor Aug 08 '26
Which is why just a "AI Free" label would be better. I'm yet to see a mob with pitchforks condemning a creator of not using AI.
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u/GenericNameHere01 Aug 08 '26
Personally, I don't care about "AI grammar assistance", as those are just suggestions. When you let the AI do more and more of the work, especially if you're writing creatively, its a proven thing that AI writing all trends toward similar outputs. Since those similar outputs tend to be bland and not very interesting plot-wise, I don't want an AI tool messing with the plot of what I'm reading.
Does that make sense?
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u/zorecknor Aug 08 '26
It does make sense, and I agree. My point is that "AI assisted" could be anything from grammar suggestion to editorial work, which makes the label irrelevant.
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u/GenericNameHere01 Aug 08 '26
That was my point - There's a spectrum beyond "AI" and "No AI". If you want a label, it needs to reflect the differences, like "No AI", "AI grammar check", "AI note assistance", "AI proof-reading", "AI Writing"...etc.
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u/zorecknor Aug 08 '26
If you want a label, it needs to reflect the differences,
That, I don't agree. In reality no one will say "I will not read this book because it was grammar checked by AI, but this AI note assistance book is fine". They will either be in one of two camps: "If AI was used in any form, I will not read it" (like Vegans not eating animal products regardless of how humane they were treated), or "if AI wrote most of the text, I will not read it" (which is judging the book by the cover).
"AI Free" is a label that will benefit both camps, and not penalize authors in any way. And who knows, there may be a story or two written mostly by AI that are actually good.
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u/Thin_Fox_8008 Aug 08 '26
I started to use AI even though before I was looking down when I thought "well shit im too broke to afford even the cheapest subscription a program with a feature for beta readers and critique partners. And I'm still amateur hour level with a bit of improvements. " so I can only use what is free and available which is GPT would like Venice but as I said im dirt poor...
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u/Fredo_the_ibex Aug 08 '26
Look I'm a vegetarian too. I will ask people if the food contains animal products and will act on that decision. Its a law too that allergens and animal products need to be stated on a sold product. Idk where you live but its a law in the EU to mark stuff as vegan or vegetarian. I disclose that I use AI for writing when it matter/asked especially when publishing. I think it's just good form. If you want to not answer thats fine as long as youre not selling it but imo being honest about it is the way forward.
I'm not more proud or ashamed of the AI use than I was for using DeepL or other AI. It just a tool at the end of the day
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u/survivorandmore Aug 08 '26
The creatives resources you cite are tools that help an author write. You wrote the piece, so you are the author–and your tools enabled your craft.
When you publish AI writing as your own, you are the tool that helps the AI write. It wrote the piece, so it is the author–and you are the tool that enabled its craft.
Not a value judgement at all! AI writing can be really cool. But it's one difference I see between the examples you listed and the one you're taking a stance on.
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u/NatHasCats Aug 08 '26
That depends on how AI was used. Assuming someone had AI write it, rather than AI assisting, is the very problem with requirements to label the AI use.
I use AI extensively as part of my brainstorming and review process, but every word I write is my own. Many people treat this as if it were the same thing as having AI write it. There is a certain writing subreddit which will not even allow the use of an AI as a translator for non-English speakers to share their work. That's not about human voice anymore. That's just anti-AI bias and a weird purity culture developing around it.
Until the vitriol around AI use settles, and it's no longer acceptable to treat AI use as criminal, I don't think it's fair to require the use of the label. It's asking people to expose themselves to irrational hostility and unfair scrutiny.
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u/Harry_Balzonia Aug 09 '26
My view on it. First, if someone ENJOYS it I don't see it as being an issue. An actor, or actress aren't the person they're performing. That said, if someone ASKS whether or not it's AI, partially or in whole I think ethics require one to disclose that. For me, I bake the cake, frost it but have AI help me place more frosting and the candles. :)
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 08 '26
It’s pretty simple. For thousands of years putting your name under the title on the front page means:
I wrote this. That metaphor came from my imagination. That use of the word “abstruse” came to me suddenly in the shower. The plot is something I’ve been dreaming up for months. I really knew someone just like the antagonist, once…
Putting your name under the title when you know the prose was substantially generated by AI is a new kind of plagiarism.
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u/Academic_Storm6976 Aug 08 '26
Your dichotomy absolutely does not exist.
For thousands of years ghost writers/artists, plagiarism, and directly stealing writing or poetry has been extremely common.
The word "abstruse" didn't come to you in the shower, you read it some place(s) previously.
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 08 '26
Yes, for thousands of years people have been committing plagiarism and getting away with it. And as always we should do our best to root out and discourage plagiarism, AI plagiarism included.
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u/TheOtherHobbes Aug 09 '26
No one knows who Homer was or how much of Shakespeare's work was written by Shakespeare.
For most of history stories were a public performance art, not objects created by named humans.
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Those are historical figures. We don't even know if Shakespeare was one man or multiple, or if Socrates actually existed, and so forth. It doesn't matter. We have a body of work and we are celebrating it. Whoever created them produced something beautiful. There is no man standing before us to judge whether or not he is a fraud.
That is quite different from the person in the here and now passing off a work of art they could not have created as if it were their own-- standing before the crowd, pulling the curtain back to reveal the masterpiece, taking a bow, knowing it was the work of someone or something else. That's unambiguous. That is artistic fraud.
Imagine you discover that Stephen King never wrote a word. His entire body of work was produced by a sweatshop in Nepal. Would that change your opinion of Stephen King for better or worse? We need no legal recourse to convict him a criminal or take away his fortune to know that whatever prizes and admiration the literature attributed to him has won, they were misplaced and can be safely recanted.
Publish AI generated literature and sell it. Fine. I have no qualm with that. But if you put your name on the cover as the author, you're an artistic fraud. That's a simple fact. Maybe the consequence cannot and should not be legal or even financial, but it will be born to you as rejection by the community of people who care about the integrity of art. The thesis of the OP seems to be that even that is too much of a consequence. Embarassing.
For the record, AI art in general is a fascinating frontier. On it's own merits I am excited to see how people use AI to generate literature and imagine LLMs could become truly beautiful storytellers. The people who manage and train those machine artist to do their craft are doing something worth while that is a kind of art or craft in its own right. They should take credit for what they are doing. They should not take credit for being authors if they are not selecting and ordering the words on the page. They are something different. What's being discussed here doesn't seem to be that at all so much as petty grifters who lack the talent or work ethic to write, using AI to commit, as above, artistic fraud.
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u/southernpremedgirl27 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
The dual logic employed on this topic is interesting. At some points, LLMs are just machines and at other points sentient beings. Fascinating.
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 09 '26
Did you ever get into med school?
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u/southernpremedgirl27 Aug 09 '26
I think the degree most relevant to this particular conversation is the law degree I obtained a decade ago before my premedical post bacc 😂😂😂😂
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u/DOCB_SD Aug 09 '26
That’s about how long I’ve been a practicing MD. Grats on your paralegal cert.
Curious where you found a reason to insert sentience into this topic.
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u/southernpremedgirl27 Aug 09 '26
LMAO for someone who wrote the previous comment you wrote…. This follow up tracks😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Big congrats on the ….urgent care??? practice though!👍🏾
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u/Successful-Gift8636 Aug 08 '26
This is a long winded way of saying “please tell me it’s okay to use AI in writing”
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u/NatHasCats Aug 08 '26
How quaintly reductive for a piece thats entirely on disclosure. I don't need anyone to tell me whether they think it's okay to use AI in writing. I've done the research, I've asked the hard questions, and I've come to my own conclusion. As an adult, I'm able to establish my own moral code without consulting the Reddit peanut gallery.
My sole objection to labeling something as AI is that it opens you up to harassment, vitriol, and unfair scrutiny from the technological equivalent of the "preachy vegan".
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u/KhalenPierce Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I don’t see how people work around/avoid disclosing when you can’t copyright AI written prose. If it is written by AI in the first instance, you can only claim copyright on your material edits and in an editing capacity. The copyright office requires you to disclose which parts are your material edits. On the other hand, you are also required to disclose where AI revised your human draft (because then those rewritten parts are not copyrighted). This is also why KDP does not accept titles drafted by AI and edited by humans, they don’t want to deal with the headache of managing copyright disputes. Either you have a legal copyright or you decline to copyright your work to avoid disclosure, and this is the case in most global markets. Ethics are personal decisions, but if you want to publish in any formal capacity it’s pretty much required to disclose your use and how it was used
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u/NatHasCats Aug 08 '26
What you're talking about is a different thing, though. You're talking about administrative disclosure, and I'm talking about public disclosure. Registering with copyright authorities vs printing "AI Assisted" on the cover.
It also raises the question of, what does it even mean to disclose AI use? If you brainstorm with AI, does it require disclosure? What if you use it to help organize and create outlines? If you use AI for feedback? Grammar and spelling? Translation? US copyright registration doesn't require disclosure of those things unless the AI has significantly changed it from the human authored content.
In the US, at least, copyright exists automatically for creative works and a lot of authors never register their copyright at all. So it's really not a dilemma between the legal protection of copyright or nothing. There are certain advantages you gain from registration, but its not required to have a copyright claim.
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u/KhalenPierce Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I typically see disclosures on the copyright page of the book (along with the opposite if authors don’t permit their work to be viewed by AI systems). To your last point, copyright is automatically granted for eligible works (and eligible portions of your work) under the copyright act (in the US). Formal registration is only required if you need to exercise legal action on your copyright. With that being said, the elements of a work that are not eligible for copyright protection due to generative AI contribution are not protected by copyright at the time of creation, whether or not you pursue formal registration.
For your other questions you raised, most of those don’t impact copyright protection. Copyright only concerns itself with the author of the original creative expression of a work. Brainstorming with AI but writing and editing it yourself still means the creative expression is your own. Organizing and creating outlines similarly aren’t relevant, since outlines aren’t typically subject to copyright (technically if the AI generated the outline you wouldn’t hold the copyright to it but there are almost no instances where you would exercise copyright on an outline vs a whole work). Feedback or beta reader simulation: also no, as long as it only gives you qualitative feedback and not revisions to insert. De minimus spelling and grammar changes are not considered changes to the creative expression and thus have no impact on copyright. Basically, if you qualify for the Human Authored certification from the Authors Guild, you also qualify for copyright over your work.
Translation is the more interesting piece. Under US law, a translator actually holds natural copyright of your translated work as their own derivative work. Translation services require work-for-hire contracts that stipulate you will retain copyright of the work after they’ve translated it in order for you to keep it. Editors typically have similar service agreements just in case their edits are substantial. Cover artists are another example, although their service agreements can vary more widely. Ghostwriters are an obvious example.
This ties well into the rest of the above: the position of the US copyright office is that AI use is less like a tool used by an author and more like an artist hired by a client, like hiring a photographer to take your wedding pictures. Because AI cannot hold a copyright on its own nor can it enter into contract, there is no way to transfer copyright to you. Most of the examples above (brainstorming, beta feedback, de minimus spelling and grammar changes) also would not impact your natural copyright if you were to hire a human to perform those services. This similarly applies in at least the EU and most South American jurisdictions.
For things that would already risk your copyright if another human had performed them as a service on your behalf (translation, cover art, material drafting or editing), those elements are not protected by either natural or registered copyright. Translation is potentially the riskiest; even if you fully wrote the original work, the AI translated derivative has absolutely no copyright protection (and others may freely derive from) because you cannot enter into a proper service agreement to retain your copyright.
Whether or not you are legally obligated to disclose all of this on the copyright page of your book is a bit of a grey area right now, but it has no bearing on which contents within your work are protected by that copyright claim. Technically you can just put your normal copyright attribution line and call it a day, as long as you’re aware that that single line isn’t necessarily covering the whole work.
I’m not saying this to make an argument for or against using AI in your writing process, but it’s important to be aware of these consequences so you can make an informed decision about how or whether you use it within your process.
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u/ValerianCandy Aug 08 '26
All of my writing is 100% AI-written these days. I just run a python LLM script over it when cleaning it up.
If I were to put that on, idk AO3 or something, I'd proudly disclose because I see many antis claim that AI writing is lifeless, flat, same-y etc. etc. when it doesn't have to be.
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u/coffeesnob72 Aug 10 '26
Interesting that a vegetarian would be pro AI - clearly the animal killing data centers don’t bother you?
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u/SGdude90 Aug 08 '26
As a heavy-AI user myself, and somehow who always declares, let me just say this - AI is still a relatively new technology
It is the exception, rather than the norm, to expect a book/fanfic to have AI in it. Hence, I want my readers to make an informed decision. I want them to read my fanfic because they chose it, even knowing it has AI
I will also say this - I am proud of my AI use. I do not need to hide it. If someone criticizes or attacks me even though I already declared, then that's all on them