UK Society of Authors launches logo to identify books written by humans instead of AI
A new scheme has been launched to distinguish between books written by humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Spearheaded by the Society of Authors (SoA), the program allows authors to register their books and download the “Human Written” logo to be displayed on the back cover.
The programme, launched by novelist Tracy Chevalier at the London Book Fair on Tuesday, mirrors a similar move by the Writers Guild of America in the US in 2025.
Author Malorie Blackman said the program “aims to highlight the imagination, dedication, craft and care that goes into producing stories and books that everyone can enjoy.”
He added: “Any creative endeavor requires time, effort, a willingness to learn from mistakes and failures, and a determination to persevere – these are essential lifelong skills that cannot be learned and improved by letting AI do all our creative thinking and production.
“Of course, part of the pleasure of reading, listening to songs, watching movies and drama, looking at a work of art, and indeed sharing in any creative endeavor, is the sense of connection with the content creator, the feeling that it is speaking to you on a deep, emotional level that is completely absent when that work is produced by AI.”
Anna Ganley, SoA’s chief executive, said the new tagging scheme was “an important sticky tape to protect and encourage human creativity over AI-tagged content in the marketplace”.
He said: “Since generative AI platforms became mainstream, SoA has been campaigning to defend the interests of authors and protect creators from having their work completely stolen by AI tech companies to train AI chatbots.”
This happened when nearly 10,000 authors came together to publish a blank book to protest the unauthorized use of their work by AI firms.
Authors participating in the project include Richard Osman, Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro.
-copy.jpeg)
copies Don’t Steal This BookThe book, blank except for the names of the authors involved, was distributed at the London book fair on Tuesday.
organizer Don’t Steal This BookEd Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner to protect artists’ copyrights, said the AI industry was “built on stolen works”. [….] “It was taken without permission and without payment.”
Copyrighted works such as books from the open web are among the extensive data that generative AI uses to develop tools such as chatbots.
This has led to dozens of lawsuits from authors and publishers in recent years. Anthropic, the leading AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, has agreed to settle a £1.1bn class action lawsuit filed in 2025 by book authors who say the start-up used pirated copies of their works to train its product.
The government has been approached for comment.
