We’re turning some kind of corner in the ongoing conversation about if, where, and how to deal with the reality that AI-generated text has already made its way into mainstream publishing.
Here’s a look at the biggest recent headlines:
🤖 Welcome to the uncanny valley. In the most meta (but not Meta™️) of experiments, Mother Jones‘s David Corn used Claude to generate a novel about a writer who used Claude to generate a novel. It took a couple tries, but the ultimate result was “not so bad.”
- Though flawed, The Ghost in the Machine (Claude’s got jokes) kept Corn engaged: “I wanted to keep reading. The plot is taut and, though I knew what was coming, the journey to the narrative guideposts I requested is a good ride, with a few surprises along the way.”
🙏 Thanks, EU. The same international body that forced Apple to ditch the lightning port has now compelled AI companies to “add machine-readable marks to enable the detection of AI-generated or manipulated content.”
The Book Riot Newsletter
Join over 300,000 readers who get the latest book buzz, smart commentary, and must-read picks delivered straight to their inbox.
- Anthropic was the first tech company to respond publicly, announcing last week that it will add watermarks to text generated and edited by its large language models (LLMs), including Claude.
🔍 Who detects the detectors? New York Times tech journalist Brian X. Chen put popular AI-detection program Pangram through its paces, concluding after dozens of tests that “its proficiency in detecting bot-produced words will make it very useful for sniffing out annoyances” like scam emails, LinkedIn slop, and fake online reviews.
- Substack has also bet big on Pangram’s powers with a new tool that allows creators and readers to scan text on the platform for AI-generated content.
➡️ An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, which is why writer Vera Kurian has developed an app called to help authors prove their work is not AI-generated.
- AuthorProof is not AI-detection software. Rather, it captures the writing process in a way that would be incredibly annoying to try to fake.
🗳️ Weigh in: take our survey about what counts as AI-written.