Contracts and submission forms increasingly contain a clause about AI, and the wording ranges from precise to alarmingly broad. Nearly all of them are aimed at the same thing: generated prose presented as the author's own writing. Knowing that lets you answer honestly without either concealing anything or declaring your spellchecker.
What the clauses cover
| Concern | Why it appears |
|---|---|
| Generated prose in the work | Authorship, and copyright status |
| Warranty of originality | Standard, and now sometimes explicit about AI |
| Third-party rights | Whether training or output raises a claim |
| Disclosure obligations | What you must tell them, and when |
| Indemnity | Who bears the cost if a claim arises |
| Use of the work for training | A separate and increasingly negotiated point |
The last row is worth reading carefully and is not about your tools at all. It concerns whether the publisher may license your book for training, which is a rights question authors increasingly negotiate.
Answering
- Read the exact wording. They vary considerably.
- Answer about generated prose, which is what is meant.
- Disclose anything at the boundary in a sentence.
- Do not over-declare. Listing every piece of software is noise and can create confusion.
- Ask if the wording is genuinely unclear.
- Keep a standing paragraph describing your process, so your answers are consistent.
Point six is the practical habit and it's covered in how to document your writing process.
Where deterministic tools sit
A tool that analyses your existing text and generates nothing isn't what these clauses are about. The Novel Kit is in that category: no model anywhere in the extraction, nothing generated, and a report about writing you did. If a form's wording is broad enough to reach ordinary software, a one-line answer naming what you used is the honest response.
This is a description rather than legal advice, and a contract question belongs with an agent or a lawyer.
A practical next step
Write one paragraph describing your tool use and keep it. Every form and clause becomes a copy and paste, and your answers stay consistent.
Sources checked
- Agent and publisher AI submission policies
- Publishing contracts and AI clauses
- How to document your writing process
Frequently asked questions
What are publishers asking?
Typically a warranty that the work is your own and, increasingly, a specific statement about whether AI was used to generate any part of it.
Does using a spellchecker need declaring?
No serious clause means that. The concern is generated text, and a well-drafted clause says so.
What if the clause is broad?
Ask. A clause that appears to cover ordinary software is usually badly drafted rather than intended, and clarifying it is normal.