Can I use AI to write a book?

The short answer is “Yes! Of course, you can write a book with AI.”

But that’s not the best answer…because it’s probably not the right question to ask.

If you’re considering writing a book and using AI, the question to ask is “Should I use AI to write my book?”

The answer to that is, “It depends…”

It depends on what you’re writing.

What Are You Writing?

Are you trying to put together a short book—a pamphlet kind of thing—to hand out as a freebie to customers that explains your services? Or that details the exercises you’re advising clients to do? Or that provides instructions for them to follow for some reason? If yes to any of those, then the follow up question to ask is: are you using AI to polish what you’ve personally already created to make it clearer, more concise, and coherent? If yes, again, then sure! Use AI to help you with that project. No harm, no foul if you’re using content that you’ve created and asking AI to make it read better.

However, if you are wanting to write a book that you want to publish and sell, that’s a whole other ballgame.

• First, if all the content isn’t from you, then that means you’re borrowing—some say stealing—from the creative and intellectual property used to program AI. So, because your book will really be a mashup of other work that came before, your book will not be original. Are you cool with that? Sure, some folks will tell you that there are no new ideas out there, and that we’re all building on what came before. To a large extent that’s true, but when you are using your own creative and intellectual powers to build upon what came before, you are making it new with your perspective, style, and whatever is in your personal history to give it a unique twist. In that sense, AI cannot write YOUR book. And what’s the point of writing a book that’s not yours?
• Second, and perhaps this is the most important point: you cannot copyright an AI-written book in the United States and many other countries. Why would you publish something that anyone else could easily pirate and claim as their own when you’d have no recourse to challenge them? This is a serious point that few people seem to be talking about when they bring up AI. You cannot copyright AI-written text or AI-created graphics. When your book gets loaded into KDP (Amazon’s publishing platform), IngramSpark (another major publishing platform), or most of the other platforms, you will be asked whether you used AI to create anything in your book. Why? Because those institutions want to be transparent with readers about who really wrote your book, and they are aware there are potential copyright issues involved with it.

We’re not saying AI has zero roles in book production. We believe it’s a great tool for you after you’ve written your content. Most of the grammar and editing tools available are AI-based. It’s fine and even helpful to use those. AI is also adept at organizing material you’ve already created in a new or better way. And it is useful (sometimes—it’s not always great at this!) to summarize something that has already been created.

So, if you want our opinion, the long answer to “Can I use AI to write my book?” is, “we wouldn’t advise that.”