Writers, if you’re letting AI write your scenes, your chapters, or your books, I have one question: What exactly do you own? I went looking for answers and found the bodies—the AI Gamble can cost you everything.
An influencer and trademark lawyer, Jennifer Brantley (@thefineprintlawyer on IG), posted a really interesting reel about why AI might be “hiding the bodies.”
It was provocative, particularly in light of some of the publishing deals we’ve recently seen fall apart.
I’ve talked before about the case of a young Black author reportedly on the verge of a nearly $2 million deal—only for the deal to collapse.
Now, we don’t know exactly why that happened, and I don’t want to pretend that we do. But Brantley’s reel raised an interesting possibility: What happens when an agent or publisher loses confidence that the work they’re buying was actually written by the author?
And more specifically: What happens when they don’t know how much AI was used to create it?
That sent me straight down a research rabbit hole.
Because Brantley brought up something I had not seriously considered before:
AI-generated material may not be protected by copyright.
Now, y’all know I occasionally play a lawyer on Substack. And as a historical-fiction writer, I spend an obscene amount of time researching things, weighing evidence, trying to figure out what actually happened versus what somebody merely said happened.
So I went looking and found facts:
In January 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office released Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability.
In this report, the U.S. Copyright Office says:
“Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material.” (page iii)
Y’all see that? Getting ChatGPT, Claude, or any of the others to draft a novel means it can’t be copyrighted.
The report also says:
“Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material.” This means the lawyers and the U.S. Copyright Office will have to play Solemn and split your baby into pieces, figuring out which parts belong to which mother.
The part of the novel creation process where AI can be used for research and brainstorming is allowed, as I stated in Receipts Please, but if you think your human control comes from designing a prompt for the AI, guess again. According to the U.S. Copyright Office on page 18:
“prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control.”
In other words, simply typing an AI Prompt like, Write me a novel about X or a scene about Y or a chapter with A-P level of specificity, does not make you the author of that expression for purposes of copyright.
Think about the danger you’ve put your idea in by having AI write it. There is a ton of what people call “AI slop” being sold right now—on Amazon and elsewhere. Books and other products that someone may have generated substantially or entirely with AI and then put into the marketplace.
These products make money. Lack of copyright protection doesn’t magically claw back the money somebody already earned selling something.
But what happens when somebody else copies that same AI-generated material?
What exactly does the purported author own? What can they defend?
I’ve had conversations with showrunners, and Hollywood is buzzing, hunting for unique IP, intellectual property. I’m talking about books being acquired for serious money—especially books with film and television potential. Copyrighted books are IP.
Imagine somebody is prepared to invest seven figures in a property because it is deliciously marketable. Everybody can see the movie. Everybody can see the limited series. People want the rights.
Except now, the buyers are asking who actually wrote this?
If substantial portions of the manuscript were generated by AI, those portions may not have copyright protection. No one’s going to pay big bucks for 2/3 of a manuscript. And what stops the studio from now running with the idea without you? They can because there’s no copyright.
Suddenly this isn’t merely an ethical debate about whether writers “should” use AI.
It’s a chain-of-title problem.
It’s a rights problem.
It’s a due-diligence problem.
It’s a very expensive problem.
And to be clear, the Copyright Office is not saying that touching AI makes your book uncopyrightable.
Quite the opposite.
On page 41 of the report, the US Copyright Office says that using AI as an assistive tool does not prevent copyright protection. Human-authored material remains protectable. Human creative selection, editing, coordination, and arrangement may be protectable. Creative human modifications of AI-generated material may also qualify for protection.
But this line drawn in the sand is fuzzy. Figuring out what one actually has is the new problem.
If AI gives you something and you substantially transform it, what portion is yours?
How much modification is enough?
What constitutes sufficient human creative control?
For those who think the courts are already too invasive, wait until they have to start digging into these cases. If millions of dollars are riding on the answer, figuring this out will be extremely expensive.
Which brings me back to that publishing deal.
Could uncertainty about AI have been the reason that particular deal collapsed? I don’t know.
The people involved aren’t actually talking. So none of us knows.
But I now understand a little better why an agent, publisher, studio or producer spending serious money on intellectual property might be deeply concerned about the origin of a work. They aren’t Amazon Indie Publishing or what I like to call the Wild West where just about anything uploaded is sellable.
Today’s markets are not just buying good ideas. They are buying rights.
And they need to know that the person selling those rights actually has something to sell that has protections
So here’s my advice to writers looking for shortcuts:
Don’t.
Shortcuts have a way of coming back and making you bleed in ways you couldn’t see when you took them.
Nothing beats putting your butt in the chair and doing the work.
And there’s another issue writers need to start thinking about.
If you’re working with an editor, a critique partner, or a critique group, establish ground rules about AI.
Prohibit them from feeding your manuscript into an AI system.
Know what tools they’re using.
Know what happens to the material that you’re sharing after the critique or edit.
Your unpublished manuscript is your work. Your ideas, characters, and pages should not become somebody else’s AI input without your knowledge.
That doesn’t mean we should panic. It means writers need to know what is happening to their work.
New technology doesn’t change the hardest part of being a writer.
Creating is scary.
Comparison is inevitable.
And writing can be lonely.
You sit in a room by yourself, putting words onto a screen or paper, wondering whether any of it works.
But that’s the work of being a writer.
This weekend I was doing a little research of my own, and I discovered something that stopped me.
Murder in St. James’s Park is my thirty-first novel. And Lady Worthing belongs to an extraordinarily small group of historical mystery series written by Black authors and featuring Black protagonists as sleuths. There are 5 series.
* 1806 Abigail Carrington Monroe, Lady Worthing, joins:
* 1920s Lanie Price by Persia Walker
* 1923 Annalee Spain by Patricia Raybon
* 1926 Louise Lloyd by Nekesa Afia
* 1948 Easy Rawlins by Walter Mosley
I didn’t know it was that rare.
The discovery made me realize how privileged I am to have sat in a chair, alone, creating and getting published the Lady Worthing Mysteries.
Abigail exists because of my imagination, life experiences, and love of history—and because of the labor.
Sitting in that chair.
Pounding those keys.
Figuring out who she is.
Watching her grow.
Watching her struggle.
Watching her come into her own.
Even if that means the untimely demise of her husband.
I’m just saying.
And now I’m getting ready to write the next Lady Worthing mystery. You’d think after thirty-one novels—and after spending four books with these characters—the beginning shouldn’t scare me, not anymore.
It does.
How do I begin?
Where do I begin?
What belongs in this book?
What doesn’t?
I’m doing my pre-work now. I’m thinking about these characters I know so well and asking what new growth should we see from them.
Because I don’t want them to be stagnant.
And I don’t think you come to these books to read stagnant characters.
But I know this much: No AI prompt is going to write the next Lady Worthing mystery for me.
There isn’t a shortcut around the blank page, but I get to decide what happens next.
That’s writing.
That’s authorship.
That’s the work.
So I’m going to put my butt in the chair and do it.
I suggest y’all do the same.
This week’s reading list is the rare historical mystery series:
Lanie Price Mystery Series by Persia Walker — Set in 1920s Harlem, society reporter Lanie Price uses her journalistic instincts to investigate murder, secrets, and corruption amid the glamour and tensions of the Harlem Renaissance.
Annalee Spain Mystery Series by Patricia Raybon — Set in 1920s Denver, young Black theologian and professor Annalee Spain investigates murders while confronting racism, danger, and the social constraints of the era.
Harlem Renaissance Mystery Series by Nekesa Afia — Beginning with Dead Dead Girls, the series follows Louise Lloyd through 1920s Harlem as she investigates murders threatening Black women in her community.
Easy Rawlins Mystery Series by Walter Mosley — Beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress, set in 1948 Los Angeles, Black WWII veteran Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is drawn into finding a missing woman and begins his long career as an unofficial private detective.
Murder in St. James’s Park is out. That’s book 4 in the Lady Worthing Mysteries.
The Book Worm Bookshop is my store of the week. Please support this indie bookstore as well as your own local indie bookstore.
And The Book Worm Bookshop has a few signed copies of Fire Sword and Sea and Murder in St. James’s Park.
You can also try one of my partners in the fight, bookstores large and small, who are in the trenches with me.
You can find my notes on Substack or on my website, VanessaRiley.com, under the podcast link in the About tab.
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I want you to come again. This is Vanessa Riley.
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