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Labeling AI

Labeling AI

Last updated on: August 13, 2026 at 7:57 am by Gene Veith

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Labeling AI 2026-08-13T07:57:06-04:00 Gene Veith

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One attempt to defend human beings against AI intrusions is requiring that AI-generated material be labeled. This is being pursued by both government and private initiatives. Though labeling laws, regulations, and rules will be hard to enforce, I actually think they could do some good.

The European Union has passed a law requiring companies and organizations to label AI-generated text and images. Failure to comply will mean big fines. Though American companies are of course not under the jurisdiction of EU law, our “multi-national corporations” have a presence in international markets and since online goods have no border they will presumably have to comply. The United States has no federal law addressing the issue–though one has been proposed–but several states (Utah, California, New York, Connecticut, Colorado) have “transparency” laws and more states are considering them. Such state laws will also affect companies and groups with a nationwide audience.

The EU law does not cover “personal” use use of AI, though “text that aims to inform the public on general interest issues” will require labels. Officials are concerned about the political use of AI, including “deep fakes” that can depict candidates doing or saying something that they did not, in reality, do or say.

The EU law also does not cover the “artistic” use of AI. But this is becoming more and more of an issue in creative circles, so private actors are stepping in to impose rules of their own.

Mia Ballard self-published her horror novel Shy Girl. It was so successful that Hachette Books, one of America’s “Big Five” publishers, picked it up. After the book’s UK release, readers raised the suspicion that AI had a hand in writing the book. Indeed, an AI detector found that 78% of the book was AI-generated.

The publisher immediately pulled the book from circulation and cancelled the publication. Ballard’s publishing contract clearly specified that the book must be original and that she is the sole author. Ballard claimed that the AI came not from her but from a friend she employed to edit the book, but authors are still responsible for the manuscript they submit.

Now publishers are inserting into their contracts specific language addressing AI. The Author’s Guild, which seeks to protect human authors, has issued guidelines for publishers and authors.

What’s driving this rage for transparency, though, isn’t the publishing companies and authors, both of whom can be tempted to let AI do their work for them. The big factor is that readers and other audiences for artistic work just hate AI. When they discover that the novel, art, or music that they have been enjoying was made not by a human being but by a machine, they feel swindled and angry.

In Germany at the annual Wagner festival in Bayreuth, the opera Götterdammerung [The Twilight of the Gods, the climactic episode of the Ring Cycle] was enhanced this year with AI. As the singers sang their parts, the background was projected on a giant screen with AI-generated images. As the AP story tells it,

Festival organizers said ahead of the performance that it would be the first time AI took part on stage at the event, “not as a character, but as an image-generating force.” They said that singers would be “the fixed point within a visually seething cosmos of light, texture, history, and association, amidst projections that erupt, constantly shift, and merge into one another.”. . .

The collage that the technology projected on stage puzzled the audience, [the German news agency] dpa reported, with images including former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the towers of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and a special postage stamp marking German reunification in 1990.

At the end of the performance, the audience warmly applauded the performers and the orchestra. But they booed the producer and his AI team off the stage.

There is a reason literature, music, and the other arts, along with philosophy and history, are classified in the category of “humanities.” Farming out the creative process to a large language model and its algorithms just isn’t the same as an authentic expression of a fellow human being.

Finally, Amazon.com is in an early stage of getting the message. Of the self-published novels Amazon sells, 20% are AI-generated, along with 77% of self-help books about “success.” Now, though, the leading online retailer is cracking down, sort of. Now Amazon guidelines require authors to disclose any AI-generated material–whether text, image, or advertisements– to them. (Material made with AI-assistance, though, is fine.) Otherwise, such material will be taken down. But customers who buy the AI-generated books are not informed!

Music streamers may be getting more forthcoming. Deezer reported that 44% of daily uploads are AI-generated, though these make up only 1%-3% of listening. And yet AI-tunes with AI-generated bands sometimes make the digital music charts. Streamers are adopting mandatory transparency rules and strictly police efforts to use AI to make fake releases by actual artists. And yet none of them ban AI-generated music. Spotify doesn’t exactly identify AI-generated music, but it is now identifying music made by actual human beings. Human musicians, upon confirming their existence, can now receive a “Verified by Spotify Badge” on their profiles and search results, with their reality affirmed with a green check mark.

I think labeling AI-generated material has promise as long as users can see the label. As I understand it, AI-generated writing, images, and other art-forms cannot be copyrighted. In addition to alerting buyers who prefer human creations, labeling this material would open the door to mass pirating, thus eliminating the profit motive for artists and providers who hope to sell it. And yet, individuals could still play around with AI-generation for their own amusement.

UPDATE: First time author Jerry Falade recently sparked a bidding war among 14 publishers for his crime novel Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body. The bid reached $2.4 million from a subsidiary of Macmillan. Hollywood was in negotiations to turn the book into a major motion picture.

But suspicions grew, for some of the reasons we’ll get into tomorrow. The manuscript was put through an AI-detector and came back 99% AI-generated. The whole deal fell apart, sending the publishing world into another panic.

Screenrant tells the tale, explaining why publishers and filmmakers simply cannot put out AI-generated material, no matter how good it might get: As I said above, only human-created work can by copyrighted.

Illustration: This Book Is Completely AI Generated by Tony Zhu and OpenAI ChatGPT (Author) via Amazon.com.

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