A new UK start-up is taking aim at the growing wave of AI-generated books, launching an initiative to verify and label human-written works.

Books By People has launched an “Organic Literature” certification, partnering with an initial group of independent publishing houses.

The scheme will involve Organic Literature stamps being placed on books written by humans, with only limited AI use permitted for tasks such as formatting or idea generation.

The start-up, founded by rare books specialist Esme Dennys along with Conrad Young and Gavin Johnston, said it plans to expand globally in 2026.

The first certified title will be Telenovela by Gonzalo C Garcia, publishing this November by Galley Beggar Press, one of the founding publishing partners. Other partners include Bluemoose Books, Snowbooks, Scorpius Books and Bedford Square Publishers.

Sam Jordison, co-director of Galley Beggar and adviser for Books By People, said that the initiative “is incredibly important for publishers, for authors and, most importantly, for readers. It is both a seal of quality and an assurance of the shared humanity that we look for in books.

“I’m very proud to be the publisher who will have the first stamp – and it feels very fitting that that stamp should go on Telenovela, a book about the fight for truth and against authoritarianism.”

Publishers can qualify through commitment to the certification’s standards and annual spot checks. Fees will vary depending on the number of titles produced each year.

The launch comes at a moment of heightened tension between the creative industries and AI companies. Earlier this year, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5bn to authors who accused the company of using pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.

Moves to foreground human creativity are gaining traction. In August, Faber applied a “human-written” sticker to copies of Sarah Hall’s Helm. At the time, Faber CEO Mary Cannam said the publisher’s logo “will always represent this human-written provenance”.

The launch also comes amid growing scrutiny of AI-generated content on online retailers such as Amazon’s marketplaces, which experts have warned remain a “wild west” due to the lack of regulation around AI-generated texts, and that dangerous misinformation could spread as a result.

Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, welcomed voluntary efforts to highlight human authorship but said the industry was not currently pushing for mandatory labelling.

“As the Publishers Association it’s critical that we continue to support publishers and authors in standing up for human creativity and critical thinking,” he said, adding that the PA is urging online retailers like Amazon to take stronger action against “low-quality AI-written content”.