---
title: Authors May Have to Keep Records of How They Write Their Own Books
description: HarperCollins chief Brian Murray says there is no technical fix for AI-written books, so publishing will fall back on records and trust.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-08-06T20:22:45.775Z
updated: 2026-08-06T21:17:34.194Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/authors-records-ai-written-books-harpercollins
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/authors-records-ai-books-113310.webp
categories: Literary Culture
content_type: News
region: United States
publication: The Quantum of Light
schema_type: Article
---

For a writer signing a deal now, the request may be for something no contract used to ask for: evidence of how the manuscript was actually written. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, told Publishers Weekly that publishing cannot test its way out of the AI controversies gathering around book deals, and that agents, authors and publishers will instead have to agree on how to certify that a book was written by a human being.

Speaking about HarperCollins' fiscal 2026 results, Brian was asked about those controversies directly. He called the situation “very murky”, and said generative AI is not like earlier changes in publishing, such as e-books, which “didn't impact the writing process”. The interview followed a run of cancelled book deals where the manuscripts were suspected of having been written with AI help.

## No Software Settles How a Book Was Written

[Detection tools exist](https://thequantumoflight.com/article/readers-cannot-tell-ai-written-short-stories). Brian said he does not believe there is a technical solution to finding AI-aided books, and that the answer has to be industrywide: agents, authors and publishers working out together how to certify that a book is written by a human. Getting there, he acknowledged, could involve “difficult conversations”.

## Publishers Want to Know Before They Sign

Brian said publishers need to know “up front” that a book has not been written with the assistance of AI, and raised the idea that authors may need to keep records of their writing process. He did not set out what those records would look like. He framed the answer as one of trust and relationships rather than technology, and said the industry will have to lean on those qualities to be sure books have been written without AI.

> "This is an industry built on trust and relationships, and we need to rely on those qualities."
> — Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins

## The Copyright Office Has Drawn a Narrower Line

[Brian also raised the copyright stakes](https://thequantumoflight.com/article/bloomsbury-anthropic-s-1-5-billion-copyright-settlement-with-authors-over-14-087-titles). Copyright is the foundation of publishing, he said, and a book written with AI could very well be considered uncopyrightable. “An AI-assisted book could very well be treated as a book in the public domain,” he said, warning that this could set off a series of legal issues.

The agency that decides the question in the United States has published where the line sits. In Part 2 of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence, the US Copyright Office found that [using AI to assist in creation, or including AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work, does not bar copyrightability](https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html), so long as a human author determined the work's expressive elements. That can cover a human-authored work being perceptible in an AI output, or a person making creative arrangements or modifications of it. Prompts alone do not qualify. The Office also concluded that the case has not been made for changing existing law to give AI-generated output extra protection.

Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights and Director of the Office, said the conclusions “turn on the centrality of human creativity to copyright”. She added: “Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection. Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.” The Office reached that view after reviewing more than 10,000 public comments, and has since issued registration guidance for works incorporating AI-generated content.

That legal line does not solve the problem Brian is describing. Nobody reading a finished manuscript can tell which decisions were the author's, which is why the records a writer keeps while working may become the thing a publisher asks to see.

## FAQ

**Q: Can I copyright my book if I used AI?**
Yes, according to the US Copyright Office, as long as a human author determined the work's expressive elements, either by incorporating human-authored material into what the AI produced or by making creative arrangements or modifications of it. Providing prompts alone does not qualify, and the Office has said that using AI to assist in creation does not by itself bar copyrightability.

**Q: Is it legal to write a book with AI and publish it?**
Nothing in the Copyright Office's findings makes writing a book with AI illegal. The questions publishers are raising, in Brian Murray's account, are whether such a book can be copyrighted and whether a publisher can verify how it was written.