Barnes & Noble CEO clarifies the bookseller’s stance on AI-written books after refusing to ban them: ‘This is a straightforward rejection of AI books’

Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt wants to set the record straight on his views on AI-generated books. In an interview with NBC News earlier this week, Daunt said he would not outright ban the sales of books written by AI. Daunt took the helm of the bookseller in 2019, helping to lead it through a turnaround of sliding sales by embracing the ethos of a small business, encouraging individual locations to layout their stores based on the interests and demand of their customer bases. “I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it,” Daunt told Today’s Jenna Bush Hager. “So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an AI-written book and doesn’t pretend to be something else and isn’t ripping off somebody else—as long as that’s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it—then we will stock them.” Daunt’s own admission about not condemning AI-generated books outright drew swift ire from social media, including intentions to boycott the company until it changed its AI policy. The backlash is part of a larger trend of people—including college graduates booing commencement speakers invoking AI—expressing public opposition to the technology. In Daunt’s eyes, his comments were far from an endorsement of using AI to pen manuscripts. Instead, he clarified in an email to Fortune, Barnes & Noble has taken steps to avoid selling content written by large language models, even though it will not outright prohibit sales of AI-generated content. Rather, Daunt said banning a certain subset of books could be a slippery slope in debates around what entities are responsible for restricting AI content and why. No reputable publisher would choose to release an AI-generated book, he said, meaning it would be unlikely for Barnes & Noble to stock those books. “Our position is that we do not sell AI books, as far as we are aware; we take