The publisher of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books has said it is “very difficult” to establish whether authors have used AI.
Nigel Newton, the founder and executive chairman of Bloomsbury Publishing, said advances in the technology were making it harder to know it had been used.
Mr Newton, who signed Rowling to the London-based publishing house in 1996, told The Times it was “very difficult” to detect the use of AI in authors’ manuscripts.
He said: “We recognise the huge value of AI as a research enabler but we do not want our books written by AI. Editors are our radar and our early warning system.
“There is no current perfect solution. At the end of day it’s down to our authors ... wanting to tell a story that they are passionate about. It certainly isn’t going to enhance their reputation if they’re accused of plagiarism via AI or any other route.”
It recently emerged that literary agents had been forced to change their rules for book submissions because of the rampant use of AI.
Several agents have updated their guidance to would-be authors, warning them that cover letters and manuscripts created using AI would be rejected.
John Grisham, an American crime novelist, said in August that publishers could get AI to write novels instead of paying authors.
He has predicted that technology would advance to the point where AI could write “books like ours” and publishers could try to save money by using AI to write novels.
In March, Hachette pulled a book after allegations it was written using AI. Shy Girl, by Mia Ballard, an American author and poet, tells the story of a woman held hostage and forced to live as a pet by a man she met online.
The novel was self-published in 2025 by Ballard, and quickly became a hit among horror lovers, with rave reviews on user-generated sites such as Goodreads.
Ballard, in an email to the New York Times, denied using AI herself, but said: “All I’m going to say is, please do your research on editors before trusting them with your work.”
Last year, a report warned that novels written without AI would become an “expensive luxury”. Dr Clementine Collett has claimed the creative market could become “tiered”, with only some people able to afford human-written work.
Her report found genre fiction, especially romance, thrillers and crime, was more at risk from displacement than more highbrow literary fiction. Dr Collett said this was because of their more “formulaic” make up.