KEY POINTS
- Tools such as Workings, Blindproof, Wintertext, Human Ink and ObraVera aim to record how an author wrote a text.
- The Authors Guild says it cannot endorse any single tool and does not think authors should be required to use them.
- Pangram's CEO and a publishing expert say such tools can be bypassed and may not be accepted by agents or publishers.
A growing number of software tools promise to help authors prove they wrote their own work, as accusations of AI use spread through the publishing world. WIRED reported that experts, including the Authors Guild, doubt the tools can settle the problem.
The debate gathered pace in March, when Hachette Book Group canceled the planned US release of the horror novel Shy Girl and dropped it in the UK, where it had already come out. The move followed social media speculation that the book was largely AI-generated, and a Times article about those claims. Pangram, an AI detection tool described as robust but not infallible, estimated that 78 percent of the text was AI-generated. Author Mia Ballard denies using AI, blames an editor for AI-assisted changes to an earlier self-published version, and says she is pursuing legal action.
