Publishers rely on trust, not tech, to ensure books aren’t AI-generated

TORONTO – In the absence of surefire technology to determine whether something was written by artificial intelligence, some Canadian publishers say they have to rely on something nearly as thorny: trust.

Alana Wilcox, the editorial director of Coach House Books, wrote in an email that the company asks writers to be upfront about whether their work contains material generated by AI.

She said the existing tools to discern the use of AI have proven unreliable and problematic.

“As AI becomes more sophisticated, we don’t imagine the existing tools will become more reliable — it will become more and more difficult to identify AI use,” she wrote.

There is renewed attention on the role of artificial intelligence in the book industry after a Quebec publisher cut ties with an author accused of using AI to write his debut novel.

Earlier this week, Montreal-based publishing house Les Éditions du Boréal said an analysis of some documents’ metadata found evidence author Thélyson Orélien used AI while writing his novel “C’était ça ou mourir” (“It was either that or dying”).

Allegations that Orélien used AI in his book first emerged on social media in September. The author denied using AI to write the book but said he had used it for research. Orélien did not respond to The Canadian Press’ request for comment following the publisher’s announcement on Wednesday.

Before the controversy, the novel had been nominated for several major French literary awards and won the Prix du Roman Fnac. It has since been removed from contention for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. 

Les Éditions du Boréal didn’t specify which metadata showed the AI use.

And while the allegations against Orélien illustrate that trust may not always be enough, Wilcox said the Toronto-based Coach House Books doesn’t see much of an alternative.

“Our contract asks the author to affirm that their book does not contain AI-generated material. But there is no reliable way to police this: the tools that exist have proven unreliable and problematic in countless ways,” she wrote.

“Nor are we interested in supporting systems that were trained on stolen material — our books,” she added, referencing the fact that AI detection tools are, themselves, artificial intelligence.

David Caron, the co-publisher of Toronto-based ECW Press, said their author contracts include language around AI use in the warranty clause, which asks an author to guarantee specific facts about their manuscript — including that the work is original and wholly owned by the writer.

“We have to rely on you to tell us what it is that you’ve done and what’s here in your manuscript,” Caron said. “Our best is what we can do, but we rely on the author to tell us about the things that we don’t know.”

Lisa Quinn, president of the Association of Canadian Publishers, said “the publishing industry strongly believes that artistic creation, intellectual creation is a human-centred activity.”

But Quinn, who is also the executive director of McGill-Queen’s University Press, said AI technology is a broad descriptor and there is nuance in how assistive AI tools can be used in publishing. 

For example, she said there is a significant difference between using assistive AI technology to help in the translation of a sentence for comprehension versus using generative AI to produce a translation of a complex work.

“Those uses are radically different … where the AI is in fact a generative AI engaged in the act of writing,” she said.

Like Wilcox, Quinn said she has concerns about relying on AI-detection technology because they’re predictive models built on “truthiness rather than truth,” she said.

“A perfect answer will not be forthcoming,” Quinn said. “What you will get is a likelihood that something may or may not be the case. And that I think puts writers and publishers in a very, very difficult position.”

Quinn said the evolution of AI technology is outpacing the industry’s ability to set policies around it and there are unanswered questions about how to regulate it.

“This is where, I think, having clear policy as a publisher is helpful, but it must be built on a relationship of trust and with the human-centred principle very clearly a component of that trust.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.