When People Say They Can Spot an AI-Written Book, What Are They Actually Seeing?

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Recently, I came across an interesting comment.

Someone claimed that books written using AI are easy to identify.

At first, I thought that was a bold statement.

After all, AI-generated writing has improved significantly over the last few years.

In some cases, it’s surprisingly good.

It can produce clear sentences, organise ideas, and even imitate different writing styles.

So that got me thinking.

When readers say they can tell a book was written by AI, what are they actually detecting?

Is it the technology? Or is it something else?

The more I thought about it, the more I started to wonder whether readers are really detecting AI at all.

Perhaps they’re detecting the absence of something human.

I thought about those books that stays with us long after we’ve finished reading them.

Often it’s not because the grammar was perfect.

Or because every sentence was beautifully structured. It’s because the story felt real.

The characters felt believable. The emotions felt genuine.

The writer seemed to understand something about people.

That’s difficult to measure.

And it’s even harder to automate.

As an author myself, I’ve noticed that many of the most memorable moments in writing don’t come from following a formula. They come from observation. A conversation you overheard. A mistake you made. A difficult experience. Moments that changed how you see the world.

Those things have a habit of finding their way into the page.

That’s why I think this discussion is bigger than AI.

Even before AI existed, readers often criticised books that felt generic, repetitive, or emotionally flat.

The complaint wasn’t:

“This feels written by AI.”

The complaint was:

“This doesn’t feel real.”

Perhaps that’s the question worth asking as AI becomes more involved in creative work.

The question is not whether AI can write.

Clearly it can.

The more interesting question is whether readers are looking for good writing alone.

Or whether they’re looking for evidence that another human being was behind it.

Because stories have always been more than words on a page.

They’re a way for people to share experiences, perspectives, and emotions with each other.

And maybe that’s why authenticity still matters.

Not because technology is incapable of producing sentences.

But because readers are often searching for something deeper than sentences.

They’re searching for a human connection.

Curious — if you picked up a novel and discovered it had been heavily written by AI, would it change how you felt about reading it?

What Is AI Anyway? And Why It Already Matters More Than We Think

We often talk about artificial intelligence as if it’s a single, clearly defined invention. A tool we can point to. A technology we can explain in one sentence.

But the reality is more complicated than that.

In a recent TED talk by Mustafa Suleyman, a simple but powerful idea is explored: artificial intelligence is already reshaping society faster than our ability to fully define what it actually is.

And that gap — between understanding what AI is and experiencing what it does — is where the most important changes are happening.

A Technology That Doesn’t Sit Still

Unlike traditional inventions, AI doesn’t exist in one fixed form.

It writes, recommends, analyses, predicts, generates, and increasingly assists in decision-making across industries.

But none of these roles fully captures it.

Instead, AI behaves more like a layer embedded across systems we already use every day — quietly influencing outcomes in the background.

That makes it both powerful and difficult to fully see.

Why This Isn’t Just a Tech Conversation

Even if you never “use AI” directly, you already interact with it constantly.

It shapes:

• what appears in your social media feeds
• what products you’re recommended
• what news stories are highlighted
• how books, videos, and articles are discovered

In other words, AI is increasingly involved in shaping attention itself.

And attention is the foundation of modern digital life.

What This Means for Writers and Creators

For authors, bloggers, and creatives, this shift is especially important.

AI now influences:

• how readers discover content
• how books are ranked and recommended
• how summaries and previews are generated
• how marketing content is created at scale
• and how competitive the publishing space has become

This doesn’t remove creativity.

But it does change the environment creativity lives in.

The challenge is no longer just producing meaningful work.

It’s ensuring that work can still be seen and understood in a fast-moving, algorithm-driven space.

The Bigger Question

A deeper question emerges from all of this:

If AI systems help filter and prioritise what we see every day, then who is really shaping attention?

Not in a dramatic sense — but in a structural one.

Because increasingly, we don’t choose everything we consume directly. It is curated, ranked, and suggested by systems designed to predict what we’ll engage with.

That subtly shifts how information flows through society.

Final Thought

We are not waiting for AI to arrive.

We are already living inside its early influence.

The challenge now is not just to use it, but to understand how it quietly reshapes what we read, create, and pay attention to.

🎥 Watch the TED talk here:

https://youtu.be/KKNCiRWd_j0?si=eXlmAEti1yX5vppF 

Why Knowing More Doesn’t Always Make Decisions Easier

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For most of human history, information was difficult to obtain.

If you wanted advice, you might ask a friend, a neighbour, a colleague, or someone with experience.

Your options were limited.

Today, the opposite problem exists.

Information is everywhere.

Before buying a product, people can read hundreds of reviews.

Before travelling somewhere, they can watch dozens of videos.

Before making a decision, they can search articles, listen to podcasts, ask AI, browse forums, and compare countless opinions.

In theory, having more information should make decisions easier.

Yet I’m not convinced that’s always what happens.

Sometimes it seems to do the opposite.

The more information available, the harder it becomes to decide.

Take something simple.

A person wants to buy a laptop.

Twenty years ago, they might have visited a shop and chosen between a few options.

Today they can spend days comparing specifications, reading reviews, watching comparison videos, checking forums, and asking AI for recommendations.

The result?

Sometimes they end up feeling less certain than when they started.

Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “analysis paralysis.”

The point where gathering more information stops helping and starts creating hesitation.

And honestly, I think technology has made this easier to experience.

Not because technology is bad.

But because the supply of information has become almost unlimited.

AI adds another interesting layer to this.

For the first time, people can ask questions conversationally and receive instant summaries of complex topics.

That can be incredibly useful.

But it can also create the feeling that there is always one more question to ask.

One more comparison to make.

One more perspective to consider.

Eventually, every decision reaches a point where information alone isn’t enough.

Judgement takes over.

At some stage, you stop researching and start choosing.

And that’s something technology can’t completely remove.

Because even with perfect information, people still have to decide what matters most to them.

Perhaps that’s why some of the hardest decisions in life aren’t caused by a lack of information.

They’re caused by having too much of it.

And in a world where information keeps expanding, learning when to stop searching may become just as important as knowing where to search in the first place.

Curious — have you ever spent so much time researching something that it actually became harder to make a decision?

The Most Powerful Technologies Often Change people's Behaviour Before They Even Notice

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When people think about technological change, they imagine something obvious.

A major invention. A new device.

A breakthrough that instantly changes everything.

But looking back at history, that’s not always how it happens.

Sometimes the biggest changes are the ones people barely notice while they’re happening.

Take smartphones.

When smartphones first appeared, most people saw them as better mobile phones than the analog cellphones. 

A convenient way to make calls, send and  receive messages, browse the internet, and take photos.

What many didn’t realise was that smartphones would eventually change how people communicate habits such as shopping, help in navigation, how they consume the news, build businesses, and even form relationships.

The technology didn’t just change what people could do but also how they do them.  It changed behaviour.

And I sometimes wonder whether AI is following a similar path.

Not because it’s replacing everything overnight.

But because it’s quietly influencing how people approach everyday tasks.

For example, when people encounter a problem today, many no longer start by searching multiple websites.

Increasingly, they ask AI.

When people need help writing something, they may ask AI for a starting point.

When they need to organise ideas, summarise information, or explore a topic, AI is often becoming part of the process.

None of these changes seem dramatic on their own.

But collectively, they represent a shift at certain time and in people's behaviour.

And that’s where things tend to become more interesting.

Technology tends to have its biggest impact not when people talk about it, but when people stop talking about it. 

The internet was once considered revolutionary. But today, people are barely thinking about it.

The same thing happened with email.

Online banking.

GPS navigation.

Streaming services.

Eventually, technologies become normal.

They move from being remarkable to being expected.

Perhaps AI is beginning to enter that stage.

Not as a futuristic concept.

But as a tool that quietly becomes part of everyday routines.

Whether that’s positive or negative probably depends on how people choose to use it.

But either way, it raises an interesting question.

Years from now, when people look back at this period, will they remember the technology itself?

Or will they notice how much their behaviour changed because of it?

Because sometimes the biggest technological shifts aren’t the ones that change machines.

They’re the ones that change people.

Curious — what technology has changed your daily behaviour the most over the last ten years?