Conversations with Kav – AI in Publishing + Giveaway

My Technologically stunted brain has a really hard time comprehending all the AI chatter around books and publishing making it’s way around social media. I feel like I’m always joining in the middle of a conversation and I can never catch up. So…I thought, who better to turn to then all you clever Best Readers?

I know a lot of you follow authors on FB and through newsletters and I’m thinking you’re getting a more complete picture of the issues around AI and books so here we are! I’m going to share the little bit I know and you can fill in the blanks for me, okay? Here we go! 🙂

AI and Plagiarism

I stumbled upon a huge controversy online about a general market indie author who was accused of using AI to plagiarize another author’s work. From what I can grasp, she used some kind of AI platform that actually took an original story from another author and tweaked it to be just different enough for the plagiarizing author to pass it off as her own. I can’t grasp how this could even be possible! It must be so scary for authors because it seems like it would be impossible to protect their copyright. I mean, it would be so random to even discover that your work has been stolen.

The other angle I read about is where an author can use AI to beef up their own story by requesting the AI to make it more like another author’s writing style! Whaatttt???? How is that even possible? That seems so futuristic!

AI Authored Novels?!

This one really blew my mind. There are actually books being ‘written’ by AI. From what I can understand, a human feeds in a few general plot points like a rough outline and the computer does the rest. I became aware of this when I began reading weird (to me) messages on Instagram from authors reassuring followers that they actually write their own stories – no AI authorship involved! I have a really hard time wrapping my mind around this concept!

AI in audio books

This one really irks me because I got roped into buying a book that was actually narrated by AI. I know some of you use a text to speech app to iisten to kindle books and I can see how that might be beneficial though I’ll admit to being a bit of an audio snob and really love talented voice performers. 🙂

It’s one thing, though, to go into a listening experience knowing you’re listening to an AI production, but to actually pay the same amount you would for real live narrated book is truly irksome.

AI Generated Book Covers

It just occurred to me that maybe that’s why the faceless and cartoony covers have become so prevalent. They must be AI generated, right? And likely a huge financial savings in book productions. But I hate the idea of computers taking over the artistic design of talented artists and photographers.

AI Search Help(Not!)

This one really irritates me. You know, when you go to search an online store and AI keeps ‘helpfully’ correcting your ‘typos’ so you never get the result you want? Soooo annoying.

Example: Northargyle Abbie by Janelle Leonard. No matter how many times I type that title on Amazon, it corrects my ‘mistakes’ the second I click ‘search.’ Northargyle Abbie automatically becomes North Argyle Abbey and, of course, I don’t get any results. Gah! That happens a lot with quirky titles, like the puny-y ones unique to cozies too. So frustrating!

Well, that about sums up all I know about AI Controversies and the book industry. Do you have any deeper insights? Heard more online chatter about this topic and how ti is affecting authors? I’d love it if you would share in the comments.

GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY:

Contribute to the conversation in a comment and you will be entered in a draw for a $10 Baker Book House gift card. (or Canadians will receive an Amazon.ca gift card)

Draw will be held and winner announced on Saturday July 19 2025.

34 thoughts on “Conversations with Kav – AI in Publishing + Giveaway”

  1. While I have no real new information on AI, I’ll just give you my two cents on my feelings of it.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is described as the ability of computer systems to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.  AI systems can learn from data, adapt to new inputs, and perform human-like tasks, often improving their performance over time without explicit programming for each task.  To me, it’s another step humans are taking to de-humanize our world.  Look at it in this reference.  When us older folks were kids, we had to learn to do math the “long” way.  While I won’t say the “new” way is wrong, I will say the younger generation can’t give change without the register telling them how much to give out and I’ve had more than one clerk have to work to figure out which coins to give me to come out with that amount.  I think AI is just another step towards people not learning for themselves, being creative (which we learned was essential to make us who we are), and often times putting common courtesy to the curb.  While using the computer for a reference tool, it seems we are allowing them to take over in many humanizing aspects of life.  To me, AI can be demoralizing.  The next generation will wonder why it’s worth all the sweat and work to write a book, develop a attention grabbing cover or even promote a book when all you have to do is type in a few words or phrases and let the computer do it for you.  I, also, think it’s reprehensible for someone to steal another’s research, hard work and talents by using AI to change it just enough that publishers are willing to grab and run with it.  Unfortunately, from what I hear from authors through newsletters and Facebook post, this is becoming the acceptable norm, which is an extremely saddening statement of our society. 

    And don’t get me started on autocorrect!

    2clowns at arkansas dot net

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    1. Ohhhhh…autocorrect. My most embarrassing experience with that bit of AI was on an email to my church small group. We were planning a pot luck and I offered to bring condiments only auto correct changed that word to another very unsuitable-for-the-occasion one, because it wasn’t that kind of a party, if you get my drift. If not, you’re better off not knowing. I was mortified! Still am to this day.

      Thanks for the way you explained AI – you kinda make it make sense. lol And I can see how it can be useful in moderation but I feel like it’s getting out of hand. Back when I worked in the college library we had a nifty programme that staff could use to search for plagiarism in student papers. Very helpful and served as a great lesson to students going forward. Serious offenders could be banned from not only their course but the programme and even the college as well. But it feels like that helpful computer programme has morphed into the one we have now where it has become easy to steal intellectual property from other authors.

      And I love your point about being creative. I’m a huge admirer/advocate of all the arts largely because of the power they have. – whether writing, visual arts, music, performance – to touch my emotions. All the arts are a reflection of our society and culture and that humanity component is so important.

      Thanks for contributing to the discussion, Kay. Good luck!

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      1. Oh my Kav, I feel for you on the condiments email, eek! The worse autocorrect I have had was I was in the car rushing somewhere and voice texted instead of typing, something told me to double check it and it said I was on the way to the morgue! Glad I checked that one, but I’ve had a few get by me over the years and we just laugh and say we speak text, so we know what we meant.

        Kay, I’ve had the same experience with cashiers who can’t do basic math in their head. They usually get a panicked look on their face so I just whisper, “you owe me 27 cents” and they look so relieved and give me exactly what I say, sad isn’t it?

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  2. I really don’t know a lot about AI. It feels kind of creepy to me. I know various authors were in an uproar a while back, because AI was studying their books to learn how to write that type of book. Like you, I can’t imagine what it’s like to always be on the lookout for that type of plagiarism.

    I see AI popping up on FB, it’s shown at the top right on my PC, always asking if I want to ask it a question, ugh. No, I’m just looking for a person’s page, so leave me alone.

    I also see it now at the top of reviews on amazon, they compile a generic review based on all the reviews below it. Can’t stand that either.

    As a reader where I really see a lot of AI is on book covers. If I see an extremely beautiful cover, 9 times out of 10 it’s an AI cover. I love a good cover and have read books based on that alone, but now I find myself looking closer. A lot of indie covers are AI. One thing AI doesn’t seem to be good at, and I’ve heard people comment on this, is the hands. For some reason they can’t get them right. The downside of too much “beauty” on covers is it gives an unrealistic view of life and people in general, training us to always look for that cover that wows us. In some ways it is an improvement on stock covers/photos though, some covers have turned me away just because there wasn’t enough effort put into an interesting cover to make me want to read it. Always pros and cons, huh?

    Btw: there are a lot of graphic designers doing the graphic covers we are seeing so much of. I know Courtney Walsh does a lot of them, like Becky Wade’s Sons of Scandal series. But now I’m wondering if part of that design process is done with AI. The lines are getting so blurred.

    Your comment about amazon autocorrecting your book search, I’ve had that happed too and with that specific book. Both my phone and kindle do it a lot also. It’s almost like we can’t have an original thought and do a search on it.

    Thanks for the thought-provoking topic, Kav. tracey14567 atgmail.com

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    1. Oh, I’ve noticed that too – the Amazon summary of reviews. They sound so…robotic…and sometimes are so contradictory they are funny. But yes, so annoying – especially when people might only use that AI summary as a guide as to whether they want to read the book or not.

      And I noticed that Google searches do that too, only the AI is very selective about results which make it harder to search. When I was looking for Indie books releasing this summer for last week’s discussion it kept ignoring major criteria bits — like independently published – or summer 2025 or whatever. I got the most useless summaries, and the hit list wasn’t much better. It was like the computer decided what I wanted to know and limited the search to that assumption rather then the criteria I listed.

      Interesting point about AI covers being too ‘perfect’. I’ll have to check that out along with the hands things. I was thinking more of the same cookie cutter cartoon character posed on the different covers with different coloured hair and clothes. lol But good point about stock photos — some of those images are getting old as well. There’s this one with an Amish woman walking through a field, a back view as in she is walking away, with her arms outstretched a bit. That’s been on so many covers, traditionally published books too, and it’s so confusing because I see that image and my mind says, oh, I’ve read that, based on the cover image but really I haven’t.

      I am guilty of going for a pretty cover though, and turning my nose up at a plain or clumsy one. I remember a cover by an indie author that was truly odd. She had literally taken the head from one model, arms from another, feet someplace else and superimposed them over the body of another model. All the proportions were off and the skin tones of various body parts didn’t even match. Anyway, it was so clumsy and I thought if she could put such little attention to detail on the cover, will that be the same with her writing? Just slap dab and put something out? Talk about judging a book by its cover – I didn’t read it. I know, terrible, but with so many books out there (and keep in mind, I’m paying the paperback price too. this was before I started listening to audio books.) So I guess I can see how welcome a sophisticated AI system could be for authors trying to do it all.

      I remember the controversies about whether graphic designers were actually artists back in the day. 🙂 I didn’t realize Courtney Walsh does cover designs. Hannah Linder does them too and hers are quite exceptional. I can’t imagine them being AI generated. I think with graphic design, the artist uses AI functions to enhance their work while an AI generated cover would do it all once you’ve inputted details like girl, boy, hair colour etc.

      You’ll be happy to know that I persevered with Northargyle Abbie after countless frustrating searches. It was outrageously expensive here when it first came out – $40! So I kept checking to see if the price went down and went through the same search issue every single time. But last week, hooray, the price went down to $14 and I bought it on the spot. Now I’ll never have to search for that title again. Bwahahaha!

      Good luck, Tracey!

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      1. Talking about indies and AI has me thinking of a new indie suspense that just came out June 18th by Elle E. Kay that’s an AI related story, Project Sentinel. It’s got over 30 5-star reviews, 4.8 overall, so I think I’ll give it a try. And that cover, love it! Probably AI generated, haha. But I do love a graying handsome hero 🙂

        It’s on KU for me, but the paperback is 19.99! I guess if you are paying to print your own book it’s expensive. Maybe it’ll come out on audio later.

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      2. Oohhh, great indie scoop, Tracey, star reporter! I’ve been wanting to read an Elle E. Kay book and this looks fabulous. Just checked — here it’s $27.38!!!!!! Grrrr.

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      3. I’ve never read Elle E Kay either, but I like to try a couple new authors a month. I’ll let you know how this one goes. And.. $27.38!!!!

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  3. I cringe a little when I hear authors have AI-free books, because chances are . . . they’re not completely. Spell check and grammar check are actually among the earliest forms of AI (or pattern recognition, as my husband would prefer to call it*). Now, none of this feels like AI – spell check has been around forever, and the current advancements of AI are crazy in what they can actually do (especially in comparison). But when your word processor capitalizes the first line of a sentence for you, when it corrects to the right “there”, it is all AI, so if it came to court, could they truthfully argue that they didn’t use AI?

    *He calls it pattern recognition since AI is only as good as the data patterns that have been established. If you say the same thing on the internet enough, it will assume it’s true even if it isn’t, because you’ve created a pattern. For years, even decades, you couldn’t find a photo of a full-to-the-brim glass of wine, because wine glasses are only ever filled partway, so that’s all that people would upload. However, this became too well known as one of the classic “flaws” of AI, so people have just recently started inputting full-to-the-brim glasses of wine.

    Personally, I expect once the craze and newness has died down, it will mainly become a useful tool, especially in combing through data in scientific fields. Even now higher level education has the ability to run a paper through an AI program to check it against who knows how many other papers for plagiarism. I could see publishing platforms instituting a similar thing.

    rdalquist AT gmail DOT com

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    1. Some great input here, Rachael. I did think about editing featuring AI now, though that can only go so far as it won’t catch all the emotional nuances in a story or even if an author types the wrong name for a character so, thankfully, I think we’ll still need humans eyeballing a manuscript for things like that. 🙂 And spell check – gah – annoying when there are differences in spellings from country to country. I’m Canadian so I spell neighbour this way but different sites autocorrect it to neighbor and I’m like, nooo, I spell it this way, leave me alone. 🙂

      I like that pattern recognition phrase because that absolutely describes AI perfectly, It’s not thinking for itself, it’s just mimicking what it sees, which is why I find AI written books so alarming, especially if we become complacent and accept them as okay reads. And yikes to “If you say the same thing on the internet enough, it will assume it’s true even if it isn’t, because you’ve created a pattern.” on so many levels!!!!!!

      And I agree, the plagiarism software is excellent for colleges and universities so maybe it will also work in the future for books? But I bet it would be costly — and scary for authors to have their work loaded into the kind of database required to make it effective. I bet there’s lots of copyright discussions over that idea.

      Thanks for chatting, Rachael! Good luck!

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  4. It’s sad about the plagiarism when authors work so hard & spend many lonely hours writing great books for our entertainment. Tracey used the right word concerning AI . . . creepy! Hubby knows more about it than I do, but Sun is the only morning he gets to sleep in or I’d ask for his input. Then breakfast & off to church! He was just telling me that Wmart was supposed to start using AI robots as cashiers & baggers. He already bags his own groceries as they don’t have enough cashiers.

    On FB when you make a comment, take “congrats” for example. AI will give you several different ways to say it. Congrats, well done or congrats, good job, etc. Like we’re not intelligent enough to say what we want to say.

    Also AI photos on FB gaslight folks into thinking what they’re seeing is real when it’s actually AI produced. SW Fisher mentioned in her book CAPTURE THE MOMENT about bear jams. On FB there’s a pic that looks perfectly realistic of a major bear jam where cars can’t move an inch. I’m talking a lot of bears! But folks say it’s produced by AI so now I don’t know what is real & what isn’t. Gaslighting in its purest form. If the pic is too perfect you can pretty well know it’s AI produced, but we really don’t know anymore.

    It’s also scary in the sense that AI can produce realistic photos that could actually frame a person in a crime they didn’t commit & I’m sure it goes deeper than we can even fathom or even want to think about. Also when you want to buy a product on Amazon you can ask Rufus the AI generated whatever, questions first about the product that Rufus gets from written reviews. He can scan 500 + reviews that quickly.

    I fear for the future of our kids & gkids. It’s scary not to be able to discern what’s real and what’s false.

    dianalflowers at aol dot com

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    1. It’s already over 100 degrees here this morning so it’s church online in front of the fan for me today. I walked this morning at 5:30 when it was a cooler 90. Sigh.

      Yikes, AI robots are going a bit too far. Can they really be cheaper then employing people? Mind you, I use the self serve checkouts all the time at the grocery store now. Mostly because I shop with a basket on my walker and then I have to reload it all back into the basket after checking it out and I always feel like I’m holding up the line at the cashier’s checkout and people get impatient. At self checkout there’s less pressure.

      Bwahahaha! FB AI helping you be more sociable. Too funny. I wonder if they would give you prompts for better insults if you were so inclined?!

      Photos and even videos can’t always be trusted. You really have to pay attention and check sources and make some intelligent observations on your own. And you’re reminding me of a TV show out…gosh 10 years at least, I would think. Can’t remember the name but it was about AI doing just that, erasing people, setting them up for crimes committed etc. The show featured an underground group of vigilantes setting out to right all the wrongs. Set in New York City. Interesting cast…one was a computer nerd whose programming had actually started the whole AI problem and he was trying to fix it after it got in the wrong hands. Am I remembering this correctly? Anyone know the show I’m taking about? It would be interesting to watch it again and compare it to what is happening now.

      Happy churching, Diane. And good luck!

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      1. Sounds like Person of Interest with Jim Caveziel and Michael Emerson and Amy Acker and Taraji P Henson. I loved that show!
        Didn’t Colleen Coble have a book that dealt with that? I Think I was Murdered.

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      2. Ooohhh, THANK YOU, PAULA! THAT’S THE SHOW! It was soooo good. I need to see if I can find it somewhere and watch again. Got really angsty at the end if I remember correctly. It was so suspenseful. And serie. And would really be interesting to view it ten years later since so much in AI has changed.

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  5. Papa bear is going to church. I’m watching online. Someday soon, I hope! I don’t blame you, he has a/c in his car. We don’t even walk to church when it’s in the 70s. We’re spoiled, but actually there’s no safe place to walk to church. Cars speed around these curvy country roads. Stay cool!!

    Whatever happened to the day when baggers would load up your buggy for you? . . . be it a grocery cart, walker, whatever. Sheesh! I wonder about the prompts for insults. Now that would be interesting! hahaha

    Hopefully someone can think of the movie you’re trying to remember. When you said righting all wrongs all I could think of is Spider-Man. You did mention underground so Teenage Ninja Turtles comes to mind. LOL! That’s what comes from having grandsons!

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  6. AI, as with all technology, has the potential for both good and bad. We are living in rapidly advancing times which can be exciting and intimidating. Using wisdom is key.

    psalm103and138atgmaildotcom

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  7. Kav, I don’t know a lot about AI, but as a writer, I want to know that what I have elected to read (and write!) is actually written by a real, thinking, creative person not AI. And I am totally fed up with auto-correct, especially on my phone. If there’s a way to turn that feature off, I’d love to know and I’d shut if off pronto 🙂

    ckbarker at gmail dot com

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  8. I’m about where you’re at on information regarding all of that, lol. I’ve picked up bits and pieces here and there and am probably a bit behind on all the goings-on. I did hear that a bunch of authors were having their books taken and used to “train” AI. I assume this is something that is equivalent to stealing an author’s intellectual property and I heard it was happening to A LOT of people. 🤷‍♀️ A lot of AI posts popping up all over the internet too, including social media.

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  9. I don’t know much about AI but it has been an issue in the book world and it’s stealing intellectual property, plain and simple.

    There are pics everywhere that you have to look closely to see if they are real or not and sometimes you can’t tell.  We recently had some terrible flooding just NW of us.  There is pic of two little girls in a helicopter supposably being rescued from the flood.  I don’t think it’s real because they are clean, appear dry and they have flip flops on.  I think flip flops would be the first thing lost in a flood?  Those waters rose 32 feet in about an hour.  I think at minimum, those girls would be soaking wet and shoeless?

    I really dislike the poorly done AI generated book covers.  Some are absolutely cringe worthy.

    I turned off autocorrect years ago!

    perrianne (DOT) askew (AT) me (DOT) com

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    1. It’s so frustrating when we can no longer trust what we are reading or seeing! I can see how marvellous advancements in technology can be and the good AI can do, but the flip side is awful! Good luck, Perrianne!

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  10. I think, like anything, AI can be used for good or evil. However, it seems to be a bit of a nuisance right now. I like to cook/bake and look up recipes online quite frequently. Recently I’ve noticed there are A LOT of AI generated recipes (if the recipes themselves aren’t AI written, the pictures for the recipes are). As far as AI in the book world goes, I definitely wouldn’t want a book written by AI. I’ve played around with it before, (only for myself to see what all the hubbub was about), and while it’s kind of fun, it definitely looses the heart. I would think you could use it as more of a prompt idea generator over anything. Now, when it comes to book covers, I actually don’t mind them. BUT (similarly with photoshop) I don’t like to be able to tell that it’s AI. While I definitely wouldn’t want it to get to the point of jeopardizing cover artists jobs, if used decently, it might be a better/cheaper option for authors who self publish.

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    1. Even online recipes? Oy! That’s an area I never would have thought of. It must be so discouraging for authors who put their heart and soul into writing their books to know that there are people out there who think it’s perfectly acceptable to replace them with AI. As you say, it would lose the heart. This must be a non-reader idea. Gah! Same with cover art and graphic designers. Photographers too. Like you, I can see the financial benefit for an indie author but it breaks my heart a little to think of so many jobs in the book industry threatened by AI. Sigh. Good luck, Bridget!

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  11. With the exception of auto correct, the only AI I’ve played around with is image creating. It can be fun, especially when trying to create fake book covers.😜 Though, I’ve noticed you have to be overly specific to get something you want, and even still sometimes you’ll get a person with three arms, or their head is on backwards… Otherwise the people look pretty realistic!😂 I do think that, if mixed with photoshop, an AI image could create a nice book cover. Though in my opinion nothing can replace a real model, if you’re trying to find a cheaper, or maybe quicker option, but still want a pretty book cover I think AI has potential. I’m not 100% sure, but my guess would be that Wild Heart Books uses that technique on a lot of their covers, but like them!

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    1. Bwahahaha! Three arms and head on backwards – sounds like me out in the garden on a hot, humid day. I had to go check out Wild Heart Books to see what you mean. They are pretty covers. I wonder how much is AI and how much is an actual graphic designer? I mean, someone has to manipulate the AI stuff, right? One of the image options in Word Press for my blog is ‘AI Generated’ – maybe I should try it someitime. I’ve never even clicked on that option before. Good luck, Sabrina

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  12. I haven’t really done much with AI yet. I’m so hopelessly tech-challenged that I don’t want to cram anything more in my already overloaded brain. I think there are good things about it, but I’m quite concerned about the opportunities to use it for evil and unlawful purposes.

    Thanks for your input and the remarks from everyone! I always like to see the responses and thoughts of other people.

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  13. Great post! I plant to come back to try to absorb some more of it but today, I’ll just say, “Oh, my”. I hate that someone’s sweat and tears can be stolen, yes STOLEN and it not be easily detected. WAIT! What was I thinking?This happens all of the time with identity theft. What’s happened to our time of truth and innocence?

    I’m sure there are some positive aspects to AI and I will probably climb on board in the future because I never dreamed I would be blogging or creating book memes and graphics! For now, I’ll just wait and learn more about it,

    Thanks again for a thought-provoking conversation!

    Connie

    cps1950ATgmailDOTcom

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    1. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it? I’m wondering if indie authors are more at risk from AI plagiarism. It would be gutwrenching to find your work had been pirated. I’m with you on the wait and see approach to AI. Good luck, Connie!

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