The Latest in the Fight Against AI: A Human-Authored Certification Mark

Whether levied at a self-published book gone viral, or an award winning debut novel, accusations of AI use are rampant across the publishing industry today. For readers looking to avoid AI written books, and publishers eager to promote the original work of promising new authors, the industry has become a veritable minefield. 

While there continue to be questions around tools that claim to accurately detect AI-generated content, there is a new method for guaranteeing writing that is 100% human.   

This week, the London based company, Books By People, officially registered the United Kingdom’s first certification mark for human-authored books. The announcement, which was made on Wednesday, comes a year after the company was first launched in October of 2025. 

Books By People offers this certification mark as a membership service for publishers, and it is given to titles that have met the company’s “Organic Literature standard.” The company describes their certification process as a combination of “human review and proprietary technology,” which includes an examination of a manuscript’s draft history. Under their standards, AI use for grammar-checking or transcription purposes is allowed, while AI-generated content is not. 

In an interview with Printed Word Reviews, executive co-founder of Books By People, Esme Dennys, emphasized the focus of their review process. “The key thing is that we're really looking at indicators of humanity, rather than trying to detect AI,” said Dennys. One of the main reasons for this approach is that markers of human writing remain largely the same over time, while the telltale signs of AI-generated writing become harder to identify as the technology advances. 

Books By People originally launched in 2025 with five associated publishers–Galley Beggar Press, Bluemoose Books, Snowbooks, Scorpius Books and Bedford Square Publishers–but quickly paused their acceptance of new members. As Dennys described, “it became clear very quickly that we needed to get in place really robust legal and protective frameworks.” The establishment of the company’s official certification mark comes after a ten-month review process with the UK’s Intellectual Property Office. 

As an officially registered certification mark, the Books By People stamp is now legally backed in much the same way as a Fairtrade certification. In that sense, the company is contributing to the creation of a specialized niche within the publishing industry. As Dennys described it, “there will be a sort of organic literature market in the same way that there is with food.” 

This market, however, is not defined by a single company. It has been reported that Books By People is one of a number of groups offering human-authored certification marks. Several of these groups, such as the U.S. based organization The Authors Guild, were present at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. Of the companies present in Frankfurt, Books By People’s certification mark is the only one registered with a government body. 

For Dennys, the creation of a registered certification mark is a matter of “celebrating human creativity.” When describing the effects of AI use on the book industry, she pointed towards recent statements from literary agents about manuscript submissions beginning to sound eerily similar. This slide towards artificial homogeneity is what Books By People seeks to combat. “It's about retaining uniqueness,” said Dennys. “It’s about people being able to speak to each other with their own voice.”