Everyone is talking about it: Is AI really that bad? What if I can’t afford to pay a professional? What if I can’t write as well as others due to health or life circumstances?

AI comes in many forms. The big one for authors is generative AI — an AI tool that creates content from a prompt. This content can be words, images, sounds and more.

The overlooked reality: no copyright protection

Many people talk about the subpar quality and ethical issues of generative AI.

But one legal consideration is massively overlooked, and it has a huge impact on authors and content creators: If AI created it, you do not not own the copyright. Generally, AI-generated content is considered public domain. That means someone can take that part of your book cover and reuse it however they want, and you cannot legally stop them.

This impacts authors who use AI to generate book covers, write scenes and even write entire books.

Courts around the world are confirming this. You cannot copyright AI-generated content. Even if you pay for the AI tool, copyright laws only recognise works created by human effort. Even if you wrote the prompt, using great details and multiple iterations, copyright law does not see this as human effort — as proven in the copyright case for the graphic novel Zarya of the Dawn and in the 2023 letter from the US Copyright Office.)

US Copyright Office confirmed this understanding in the Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report, Issue No. 1060 – January 29, 2025 (bold added):

“…the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts.”

When copyright does apply

To copyright AI-generated content, a human must change it sufficiently.

What does “sufficiently” mean? Imagine you saw an artwork or read a story by someone — a human. How much would you need to change to have a new work that you can copyright? It’s the same answer for AI. It must be new content, possibly inspired by someone (or something in the case of AI), but different enough to stand on its own.

Every story based on a Shakespeare play or a fairy tale uses this method. Authors take parts from the public domain story and create their own version. That version is eligible for copyright.

If you’re a visual person, let’s consider the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. The original painting is in the public domain, yet artists regularly create their own, copyright versions of it.

Other risks

If not being able to copyright AI-generated content doesn’t faze you, you may want to consider these other dangers.

Quality

Currently, the quality of AI content is sorely lacking. So much so that the term AI slop has become part of regular conversations. Images and text produced by AI often:

• makes basic factual and logical errors
• misses emotional nuance and mood
• feels generic

You likely do not want your story or book cover to have errors, feel off or be generic! This impacts authors who use AI to edit or translate their book, do research and write marketing content.

Even for basic things such as grammar and spelling, AI is missing the mark. Basic spelling and grammar checkers have seen a drop in quality since AI was introduced to the software. This Microsoft Word user has shared examples that I now see all the time.

Not only can the output quality be an issue, but so can the input quality. AI can only work with what you give it. If you’re not confident about the editing and design process, prose styles, readability levels, genre trends and other important factors, you don’t know how to add these to your AI prompt.

Ethics

The creative community generally considers AI-generated content unethical. This is because the AI systems were built from images that they never paid for and, often, outright stole.

Another ethical consideration is the environmental impact. The server machines used to power AI are burning through hardware, creating toxic waste and using massive amounts of water and electricity.

Copyright infringement

Not only are you unable to copyright content generated by AI, but legal concerns have been raised about whether AI output infringes on the copyright of other creators. The big question here is: Is the AI output “significantly” different from an existing work by another creator?

This legal issue is managed on a case-by-case basis. But authors need to know that copyright infringement does not require intention. In other words, if you distribute something without knowing that it infringes someone’s copyright, you can still face legal charges.

Limited reach

Many competitions, reviewers and readers will refuse books with content generated by (and sometimes assisted by) AI. While some have no problem with AI content, you are limiting your options. Recently, the book Shy Girl was pulled from sales due to the author’s AI usage. The book was originally self-published and then picked up by the traditional publisher Hachette, who has now discontinued the UK edition of the book and cancelled the planned US edition.

And it’s not just when you use AI for the text or cover. I recently saw a book promotion post that was almost certainly written by AI. Even though the actual book was all written by the author, a lot of commenters assumed the book was written by AI just from the AI-generated marketing text. (Whether it’s possible to tell if text is AI-generated is a great discussion I plan to post about soon.)

When can I use AI when publishing a book?

❌ Because you cannot copyright AI-generated content, authors should avoid AI to:

• generate book covers
• write content for a book
• generate images or graphics to go in a book

⚠️ Due to quality issues, authors should also be wary of using AI (generative an assisted) to:

• edit content
• write marketing materials
• fact-check information
• translate content into another language

🔍 Authors with ethical concerns should choose their AI tool carefully after research into the company’s ethics.

🌏 Authors wanting to have full access to book competitions, reviewers and readers avoid generative AI and be wary of assisted AI.

❔ In moderation, with an ethical AI tool, authors may find AI helpful to:

• research information (as long as you fact-check everything)
• suggest synonyms for a specific situation or tone
• write generic transactional messages
• create private-use reference images (such as a character appearance)

Summary

Generative AI presents itself as a fast, cheap answer for the many creatives who face barriers when publishing. But without copyright ownership and sustainable, quality content, the long-term costs may not be worthwhile.

I encourage authors to take the time to understand how AI directly impacts them, so they can make decisions that best suit their goals.