Can you use AI to write a book?

The TypeTak team put this together. We make an AI writing tool, so we have a stake in this topic. That's why every claim below links to the platform's or organizer's own page or to press coverage. It reflects the rules as of October 15, 2026, and we'll update it when they change. It's a guide, not legal advice, so please check the official rules before you submit or sign anything.

At a glance

Serial fiction platforms mostly let you post work made with AI: some ask for a label, and some don't address it at all. Writing contests and genre awards mostly don't accept it, and the strictest ones rule out AI help at any stage, not just AI-written text. Amazon KDP sits in between: it asks you to disclose AI-generated text, images and translations, but not AI you used to edit or brainstorm. US law doesn't require you to tell readers you used AI. What it settles is which parts of the book copyright protects.

Place	Posting or publishing	Contests and awards	AI covers and art
Royal Road	Allowed with an AI content warning (Kanonara)	Being checked	Being checked
Wattpad	Not addressed (Content Guidelines)	Discouraged; editing, outlining, research and grammar checks left to you (Wattys 2026)	AI covers may need reworking if the story is picked for promotion (Wattys 2026)
AO3	Not prohibited (OTW)	—	—
Substack	Allowed; disclosure optional (404 Media)	—	—
Amazon KDP	Disclosure required for AI-generated text (KDP)	—	Disclosure required for AI-generated images
Clarkesworld	—	Prohibited, including AI assistance (Neil Clarke)	—
Writer's Digest competitions	—	Prohibited beyond spell-check (WD AI policy)	—
Nebula Awards	—	Prohibited, in whole or in part (Nebula rules)	—
Hugo Awards	—	Not addressed (LAcon V recaps)	—

Related news

Commonwealth Foundation clears writers accused of using AI — After a month-long review of drafts, time-stamped documents and notes, the prize kept its 2026 regional winners. (Book Riot, 2026-06-25)
Substackers say new AI detection tool is a witch hunt — Substack added a reader-run AI scan and an optional “How I make this” statement, and says neither penalizes AI-assisted writing. (404 Media, 2026-07-28)
Hachette pulls horror novel Shy Girl after suspected AI use — The publisher dropped the UK and US editions after reader allegations; the author denies using AI. (The Guardian, 2026-03-20)
New Nebula Awards rules forbid nominees that used GenAI — SFWA tightened its draft rules the same day to exclude works written partly with LLMs. (Gizmodo, 2025-12-20)
Commonwealth Short Story Prize delays 2027 edition — Entries open in January 2027 while the Foundation reviews its entry rules on AI. (The Art Hub, 2026-08-13)

“Not addressed” means the platform's or contest's published rules have no clause on AI use. A dash means the column doesn't apply to that place.

How contests word their AI clauses

Contest	AI clause	If the rules are broken
Clarkesworld	“We will not consider any submissions translated, written, developed, or assisted by these tools.”	Submission not considered; authors also confirm no AI use in the contract
Writer's Digest	“Does not accept, use, or publish any material written by or with the aid of generative AI”; “anything more intrusive than a spell-check is unacceptable”	“May be grounds for disqualification”
Nebula Awards (from the 2026 award year)	“Works written or translated, in whole or in part, utilizing generative AI or large language models (LLMs) are not eligible”	Not eligible for any Nebula
The Wattys 2026	“We strongly discourage using generative AI for your stories”; editing, outlining, research or grammar checks “are at your discretion”	AI covers may need reworking for promotion
Hugo Awards	No AI eligibility rule; a 2025 motion on generative AI went to a committee	—

Contests that rule out AI help at any stage — Clarkesworld, Writer's Digest and the Nebulas cover more than AI-written text. Clarkesworld lists “developed, or assisted,” and Writer's Digest sets the line at spell-check. SFWA briefly drafted rules that would only have noted partial LLM use on the ballot, then the same day made works written partly with LLMs ineligible too (Gizmodo, 2025-12-20).

Contests that discourage AI but leave assistive use to you — The Wattys 2026 say they “strongly discourage” generative AI but name editing, outlining, research and grammar checks as your call. The reason they give is copyright: if a significant portion of an entry is AI-generated, “you may be unable to register a copyright.”

Contests with no AI clause — The Hugo rules are set by the WSFS business meeting, and the 2025 Seattle meeting sent its generative AI motion to a committee rather than voting it in (File 770, 2025). The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is reviewing its entry rules on AI before the 2027 edition opens (The Art Hub, 2026-08-13).

Where does “using AI” start?

Most English-language platforms and contests don't split AI use into levels, so their wording alone won't tell you whether a grammar checker or a brainstorming chat counts. Amazon KDP and Japan's largest web fiction site have already drawn those lines, and setting them side by side helps you place your own use.

Place	What is allowed	What is not allowed	What must be disclosed
Amazon KDP	AI-assisted work: you wrote it and used AI to “edit, refine, error-check,” or to brainstorm ideas	Not addressed	AI-generated text, images or translations, “even if you applied substantial edits afterwards”
Royal Road	Posting AI-assisted and AI-generated stories	Being checked	The matching content warning: AI-Assisted Content or AI-Generated Content (Kanonara)
Substack	AI-assisted writing; the company says it doesn't “prohibit or penalize” it	Not addressed	Nothing required; an optional “How I make this” statement
AO3	Works “fully or partly generated with AI tools”	AI works that break the anti-spam policy	Not addressed
Shōsetsuka ni Narō (Japan)	Ideas, research, spelling; AI drafts rewritten in your words; some AI sentences kept	A story written entirely by AI; prompts left in the text	The level of AI use on every story, shown to readers when AI text or drafts were used

Both KDP and Narō treat ideas, research and spelling as assistance that readers don't need to be told about. KDP says brainstorming counts as AI-assisted as long as you “ultimately created the text or images yourself.”

Where they part is whether AI-written sentences end up in the book. KDP counts AI text as AI-generated even after heavy editing, while Narō separates an AI draft you rewrote in your own words from AI sentences kept as they are.

The way writers actually use AI

Most writers who use AI do one of the five things below. Here's how each lines up with the rules above.

If you…	Amazon KDP	“No AI help” contests (Clarkesworld, Writer's Digest, Nebulas)	The Wattys 2026
Asked AI for ideas or research	Allowed, no disclosure	May count as prohibited (“developed, or assisted”)	Allowed (“at your discretion”)
Ran a spelling or grammar checker	Allowed, no disclosure	Spell-check likely allowed; AI rewriting suggestions may count as prohibited	Allowed (“at your discretion”)
Rewrote an AI draft in your own words	Disclosure required	Prohibited	Discouraged
Kept some AI sentences as they are	Disclosure required	Prohibited	Discouraged; copyright may not cover those parts
Used AI only for the cover	Disclosure required	Not addressed (text-only submissions)	Allowed; may need reworking if picked for promotion

This table is our reading of the rules' wording; the organizer makes the final call. If you're unsure, email the contact listed in the rules before you submit.

What the law requires

United States. No federal law requires novelists to tell readers they used AI. What the law decides is copyright. The Copyright Office's registration guidance says applicants “have a duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content” that is more than de minimis, and should claim only the human-authored parts of a text (Federal Register, 2023-03-16). Its January 2025 report adds that prompts “do not alone provide sufficient control” to make you the author, while using AI “to assist rather than stand in for human creativity” doesn't affect protection, and your creative selection, arrangement or modification of AI output can be protected (U.S. Copyright Office, 2025-01). The courts agree on the basic rule: in Thaler v. Perlmutter, the D.C. Circuit held that the Copyright Act requires a human author (D.C. Circuit, 2025-03-18), and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case (SCOTUSblog, 2026-03-02).

United Kingdom. UK law already has a rule for “computer-generated” works: the author is “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken” (CDPA 1988, s. 9(3)). The government's 2024–25 consultation asked about this protection, and a report on copyright and AI development followed on March 19, 2026 (GOV.UK). Whether s. 9(3) will change is being checked.

European Union, briefly. The AI Act's Article 50 transparency rules apply from August 2, 2026, and the Digital Omnibus moved the watermarking duty for AI providers to December 2, 2026 (Mayer Brown, 2026-07). The duties fall on AI providers and on “deployers,” a term that excludes use “in the course of a personal non-professional activity.” The text-labeling duty covers text published “to inform the public on matters of public interest,” and lifts when the text has had human review and someone holds editorial responsibility (AI Act, Art. 50(4)). For a novel, that duty generally doesn't come into play.

Readers come before the rules

Even where no rule applies, readers respond. In March 2026 Hachette dropped the horror novel Shy Girl after readers and a widely watched video essay argued it was AI-written; the author denies it and says an editor added AI changes without her knowledge (The Guardian, 2026-03-20). In January 2026, the library app Libby faced backlash after saying it doesn't exclude AI-created titles and asks publishers to self-identify them (Publishers Lunch, 2026-01-13). The writing community NaNoWriMo lost board members after it took a stand in favor of AI in creative writing in 2024; it closed in 2025, citing long-running money problems rather than the AI dispute (TechCrunch, 2025-04-01).

If you use AI, check two things before you post:

That nothing you typed to the AI, and none of its replies (“Sure, here's the next scene”), ended up in the chapter
That the same pet phrases don't repeat chapter after chapter

Whether you used AI or not, keep a record of your revisions

AI detectors can suggest AI involvement but can't prove it on their own, as the Commonwealth Foundation put it (Commonwealth Foundation, 2026-06-22). That cuts both ways: writers who never used AI can be questioned too. In May 2026, Jamir Nazir's “The Serpent in the Grove,” a regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, was rated 100% AI-generated by the detector Pangram. The Foundation didn't run detectors; it asked the winners for working drafts, time-stamped documents and notes, and concluded AI wasn't used to write the stories (Book Riot, 2026-06-25). Nazir, who said he wrote six or seven drafts, went on to win the overall prize (AI Weekly, 2026-07-03).

These are worth keeping:

Your drafts and each revised version, chapter by chapter
Planning notes and outlines
If you used AI, a note of what you asked it to do and where: ideas only, a draft you rewrote, or sentences you kept

With that last note, you can tell right away where your use falls in the “Where does using AI start?” table above.

In TypeTak, earlier versions of a page stay in History, and the version just before an agent draft or edit is inserted is saved automatically. Comparing that version with your current manuscript shows you how much you've rewritten since.

Before you enter a contest

Check these first:

Whether the AI clause rules out AI-written work only, or AI help at any stage
Whether the clause applies to covers and illustrations as well as text
Whether the rules let the organizer withdraw a prize after the results are announced
For contests that accept stories you're already serializing, whether every posted chapter fits the clause
If the wording is unclear, whether you've asked the contact listed in the rules

FAQ

Do I have to tell readers I used AI?

In the US, no law requires it. Some platforms do: Royal Road has AI content warnings, and Amazon KDP asks you to disclose AI-generated text, images and translations when you publish. Contests usually rule AI out instead of asking for disclosure, so follow the rules of the place where you post or enter.

Does using Grammarly or a spell-checker count as using AI?

Amazon KDP and the Wattys treat editing and grammar checks as assistance you don't need to report. Writer's Digest draws its line at spell-check, and Clarkesworld excludes anything “assisted” by AI tools, so for those, AI rewriting suggestions may count as prohibited. Ask the organizer if you're unsure.

Revision log

2026-10-15 — First published

Sources

Platforms: Wattpad — Content Guidelines (rev. 2026-08-10)Kanonara — How to post on Royal Road (2026-10-05)Royal Road — AI-text policy OTW — AI and data scraping on the Archive (2023-05-13)404 Media — Substack AI detection (2026-07-28)Amazon KDP — Content guidelines Shōsetsuka ni Narō — AI use
Contests and awards: Wattpad — The Wattys 2026 entry requirements Neil Clarke — Clarkesworld guidelines (2025)Writer's Digest — AI policy (2025-09-22)SFWA — Nebula rules Gizmodo — Nebula AI rules (2025-12-20)LAcon V — business meeting recaps File 770 — Seattle 2025 business meeting
Commonwealth Short Story Prize: Commonwealth Foundation — 2026 prize update (2026-06-22)Book Riot (2026-06-25)AI Weekly (2026-07-03)The Art Hub (2026-08-13)
Readers: The Guardian — Shy Girl (2026-03-20)Publishers Lunch — Libby (2026-01-13)TechCrunch — NaNoWriMo shuts down (2025-04-01)
Law: Federal Register — Copyright registration guidance (2023-03-16)U.S. Copyright Office — Part 2: Copyrightability (2025-01)D.C. Circuit — Thaler v. Perlmutter (2025-03-18)SCOTUSblog — Thaler v. Perlmutter legislation.gov.uk — CDPA 1988 s. 9 GOV.UK — Copyright and AI consultation AI Act — Article 50 AI Act — Article 3 Mayer Brown — Digital Omnibus on AI (2026-07)