Oct. 4, 2026 — Novels, AI and “Evidence:” Proof of Authorship
Check out this week’s blog post by IP attorney and author Timothy Trainer, host of the podcast and video show Tim’s Travails • Follow Tim on Substack
Image source: Wikipedia • Details below
A recent New York Times article about Haitian-born Canadian novelist and poet Thélyson Orélien, screamed out at me. It read, “His Novel Had a Shot at a Top Book Prize. Then Someone Ran an A.I. Test.” Despite having my new novel, The China Dilemma, published days ago, I have no fantasy about winning a top book prize. I am, however, concerned about AI-generated competition.
For those of us who spend hundreds or thousands of solitary hours with pen and paper or at a typewriter or laptop keyboard, we do not want to “compete” with a machine. Frankly, I’m not competing with other writers. The competition is with myself, which is sufficiently difficult, as I hope that the story, the characters, and the scenes improve from novel to novel. The challenge is to write something that holds a reader’s interest and do it so that they want to see the next book I write.
With evolving AI technology able to produce novels based on learning from existing books, it raises the question: How do authors prove that what they seek to publish is their work? Do authors have to save their daily edits, additions, and new text in a dedicated file? Do they have to include in that file copies of completed manuscript drafts and highlight the changes they’ve made as they proofread different versions? Do they save copies of the editor’s notes and edits in that dedicated file? How about suggested changes and edits of beta readers being saved? Are writers now required to save all of these things as evidence of their human creation in order to rebut allegations of relying on AI or that the book is AI-generated?
Luckily, I’ve been doing most of these things for the three novels that have been published since 2023. The challenge for any creator is finding ways to track and save the steps involved in the creation of a completed work in order to demonstrate that the work is the result of human creation. We’ve entered a new era when creators may have to prove that their works are original and rebut allegations of reliance on AI and argue that it is the AI-generated work that is infringing on a copyrighted work.
There have been numerous court cases looking at AI-generated works based on copyrighted material, and many of those cases revolve around AI companies legally arguing about the copyright law’s fair use exemption that makes what AI companies do legal. However, the NY Times headline raises a different question: what will authors or creators of other types of works have to do to rebut allegations of relying on AI? This is a question worth exploring, and how lawyers and publishers advise creators, specifically writers, about the evidence needed to prove that a human, not a machine, generated the work.
For more information: See my podcast conversation with Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance CEO.
Image above: Thélyson Orélien, born May 23, 1988, is a Haitian-born Canadian novelist and poet. He is best known for his 2026 novel C’était ça ou mourir, published by Éditions du Boréal in Quebec and by Éditions Grasset in France. The work received widespread critical acclaim and appeared on the selection lists for numerous literary awards, including the Prix Goncourt. Orélien was subsequently accused of plagiarism and of using generative AI in several of his works. As a result, C’était ça ou mourir was removed from consideration for the Prix Goncourt. Read more about him here.
About Timothy Trainer: Writing books is a passion for attorney Timothy Trainer, who for more than three decades focused on intellectual property issues in his day job. He has worked in government agencies and in the private sector, and his assignments have taken him to 60 countries around the world.
Tim found time to pen a few non-fiction tomes, including his first book, Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights;the 15th edition was published in 2022. Thomson Reuters’ Aspatore Books published Tim’s next title in 2015, Potato Chips to Computer Chips: The War on Fake Stuff.
Fiction was a genre he always wanted to try. In 2019, Pendulum Over the Pacific, was released by Joshua Tree Publishing. “This political intrigue story is set in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and centers on trade tensions between the U.S. and Japan in the late 1980s,” Tim explains.
In 2023, his first series hit bookstores: The China Connection.
In 2025, he published the sequel, The China Factor, which ranked #63 on the Amazon Asian Literature list in May.
Coming this Fall: The China Dilemma!
Click here to buy all of Tim’s books.
