Barnes & Noble CEO clarifies that the bookseller does not sell AI-written books, despite refusing to impose an outright ban on their sales

CEO James Daunt told NBC News that Barnes & Noble will not ban AI-generated books outright, but will stock them only if they are clearly labeled as AI-written and do not misrepresent their origin or infringe on others' work.

Daunt stated in an email to Fortune that Barnes & Noble takes active measures to exclude all AI-generated books from its online catalogue and does not knowingly order them for stores, because no reputable publisher would choose to release an AI-generated book.

Daunt argued that setting a prescriptive policy on AI books should be the publisher's responsibility, not the bookseller's, because determining detection standards—such as whether to ban only 100% AI-written books or those more than 50% AI-generated—would be difficult to identify and enforce.