The Society of Authors (SoA) has launched a scheme to help identify works written by humans in a market increasingly flooded by AI-generated books.

The scheme is the first of its kind launched by a UK trade association, and allows authors to register their books and download a “Human Authored” logo to display on their back cover.

The SoA said the absence of any government measure to compel tech companies to label AI-generated output meant readers were struggling to distinguish between books written by a human, and machine-generated work based on AI models trained on copyrighted work without permission or payment.

It mirrors a similar scheme launched by the Authors Guild in the US at the beginning of 2025.

Mary Beard, the classicist, is one of several high-profile authors who have backed the scheme and plan to register their works on the Human Authored website. “It’s only going to be human authored books on my desert island,” she said.

Malorie Blackman, the children’s author, said the scheme “seeks to highlight the imagination, commitment, craft and care taken to produce stories and books which can be enjoyed by everyone.

“Any creative endeavour requires time, effort, a willingness to learn from mistakes and failure, and a determination to persevere – lifelong, essential skills which cannot be learned and honed by allowing AI to do all of our creative thinking and production for us.

“Surely part of the pleasure of reading, listening to songs, watching films and dramas, looking at an artwork and, in fact, sharing any creative endeavour is that sense of connection with the content creator, that feeling that they are speaking to you on some deep, emotional level that is entirely absent when the work has been produced by AI.”

The scheme and logo was launched by the novelist Tracy Chevalier at the London Book Fair on Tuesday.

It comes as thousands of authors, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman, published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.

The work, titled Don’t Steal This Book, includes only a list of the authors’ names. Copies are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.

Anna Ganley, chief executive of the SoA, said in a recent survey that 82% of the society’s author members said they would be interested in a Human Authored certification scheme.

“Since generative AI platforms have become mainstream, the SoA has been campaigning to defend authors’ interests and safeguard creators against the whole-scale theft of their work by AI tech companies to train their AI chatbots,” she said.

“Our new labelling scheme is an important sticking plaster to protect and promote human creativity in lieu of AI labelled content in the marketplace.”