Generative AI has now been in our lives long enough that no college senior graduating this spring has experienced a single year of college without it. Yet I don’t find that book publishers or writing awards have truly come to terms with the prevalence of this technology, how it affects behavior, and how it necessitates new processes and responsibility.
Any organization that wishes to prohibit AI use today must face an evolving conundrum: Writers are astute enough to claim, “This is my human work and you can’t prove otherwise,” regardless of whether they’ve used AI. Since the very institutions that prohibit AI use are also unlikely to implement AI detection software, they may unwittingly bring attention and investment to work that incorporates AI output. If writers don’t see methods of enforcement, they will use AI if it suits them—not because they’re bad people but because they’re human.
Recently, regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize were alleged to have been written with AI. I observed a publishing-industry professional comment on social media that the situation demonstrates that editors should be trained on what AI writing looks like. Another professional responded along the lines of “absolutely not”—they would not let such technology live rent-free in their head—yet offered no alternative solution.
This, I fear, is abdicating the responsibility that every publishing professional now has, which is not necessarily to learn AI but to effectively deal with its consequences in their work. It is possible to stand up against the misuse of AI, have concerns about its billionaire ownership, and consider its negative societal effects, all while also exploring responsible, informed use. While prohibiting AI might be appropriate for some, enforcing such a policy (if it is a real policy and not merely a wish) requires effort and resources that will have to be continually upgraded and assessed. How hard do you want to fight, and how much time and money do you want to commit? I can imagine a couple paths forward depending on the resources of the organization.
One path forward: Adopt a no-AI policy and determine the method of enforcement. This describes Microcosm Publishing, which laid out their policy earlier this year; they use AI detection software such as Pangram to aid in enforcement when working with authors. Some argue that detection software is insufficiently accurate, although I haven’t found anyone saying they rely solely on software to render a verdict. Rather, it is a tool that can raise a flag for further human review. Any organization could make it a condition of submission that the writer automatically grant permission for their work to be screened by AI detection software that doesn’t save the work or train on the work. Organizations that can’t abide use of such software (or don’t have the money) might need to employ staff or hire freelancers who understand AI well enough to detect its use or who research potential authors or prize-winners for signs they’re AI users. (Yes, literary organizations turn into the AI police. It’s not pretty.)
Another path forward: Require writers to certify their writing is human through a third-party service. I’m contacted by such services every month or so. They use varied methods of certification, some of which require special software that writers need to download and use, but I cannot envision this happening on a large scale. Other certification services, like Verify My Writing, are based on the same technology as AI detection software; Verify My Writing uses Pangram. Whatever the method, requiring writers to self-certify would likely put the cost burden on the writer. (Note that the Authors Guild’s Human Authored Certification relies on the honor system, so it’s not certifying anything other than that a verified human being has submitted the work and vowed “it’s my creation,” which doesn’t solve anything.)
What I think will happen over the long term: Anti-AI policies will fall away. First, I’m not confident AI detection software can keep up with the rate of AI advancement. Even if it can, there are increasingly finer shades of gray. Is 23 percent AI-assisted work, as determined by Pangram, a deal breaker? What percentage is an organization comfortable with? How do they decide? Why not just use standard editorial criteria for evaluation and reject what’s unacceptable as unacceptable and be ready to explain why? Institutions that don’t prohibit AI don’t have to police percentages or deal with suspicion, witch hunts, and scandals—or enforcement that’s likely to be contested.
That brings me to the IBPA Book Awards: Their guidelines do not prohibit AI-assisted work. One author who’s been transparent about his AI use, Luke Stoffel, just won the 2026 IBPA Award in the neurodivergent communities category for his memoir, How to Win One Million Dollars and BEEP Glitter! In an interview this week, Stoffel told me he’s dyslexic and has been using AI for three years to support his creative work. (He is also an active artist and creative director.) When he was young, he was never encouraged to write, and his teachers couldn’t read his garbled sentences; his sister would help edit his work before he submitted it to anyone.
When AI came on the scene, Stoffel had been working on his memoir since 2016 with a writing group and developmental editor. His initial instructions for ChatGPT were narrow: Fix the grammar, leave the voice alone. But he found the collaboration more generative than he expected. The AI helped him develop a three-dimensional story in ways he hadn’t been able to manage on his own, and he came to see his use of AI as thematically central to the book itself. The memoir’s final reveal is that he used advanced technology to compensate for the limitations of dyslexia and ADHD. Since then, he has written more works in collaboration with AI, ultimately using Claude to develop a science fiction novel exploring consciousness and his relationship with the technology.
“I would’ve never been a published writer without it,” Stoffel says. Plus, using AI didn’t mean less work for him. He still spent hours upon hours writing and editing. Kirkus Reviews said his memoir was written “with humor, panache, and heart.” Publishers Weekly BookLife scored it as 9.5 out of 10 and said it was powerful. Stoffel doesn’t think the book would’ve been better if he’d written it without AI, but he also sees the creative dangers: that it’s easy to become exhausted during the creative process, and “we start to accept what the machine is saying to us and we publish without doing due diligence.” Stoffel says he’s done far more creative work in the past two years than he ever could have imagined doing, across all the fields he participates in, because of AI. He’s not concerned about losing his paid work because, he says, “AI will never have aesthetics.”
Bottom line: Aggressive AI policing implies that writers are choosing convenience over craft, or that no defensible AI use exists in the writing profession. I’d prefer to treat writers as professionals who decide on their tools and creative workflow, then judge based on output, not process. Of course, individuals with zero tolerance for AI typically have deeply held moral or ethical objections to the technology, but as I see it, many commercial publishers or institutions with diverse stakeholders are not proactive but reactive, mainly trying to stem online backlash, as was the case in the SFWA community regarding the Nebula Awards. The people speaking against AI are loud, but they’re rarely the ones who have to find a defensible and effective way to police AI use.
Stoffel said the IBPA judges knew he used AI but awarded him anyway. “It was a risk. The IBPA is involved whether they know it or not.” Will a scandal follow the IBPA as Stoffel’s award story spreads? I expect to hear a chorus of people object to AI-assisted work qualifying for and winning a major book award. At the same time, I find unwillingness to accommodate people like Stoffel—who are using the tools to execute their creative vision, not take shortcuts—unenviable. AI output varies widely with human input; it guarantees neither excellence nor atrociousness. What is the goal of excluding AI-assisted work in the long run if the author succeeds in the execution of their vision
While there are a lot of jokes circulating about the bad writing among the regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, to me, this isn’t a problem with AI. Rather, it reflects poorly on the judges’ taste.
Copyeditor Nicole Klungle assisted me greatly with insights into ableism, disability, and AI, and her questions on the topic contributed to my interview preparation for Stoffel as well as to the final bottom line.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
