A quietly significant signal: Canada is using the ISBN system — dull publishing infrastructure — as the lever for AI content policy instead of any dedicated AI statute, and cataloging rules are far easier to amend than laws, so this could become a template elsewhere. The obvious weak spot is the phrase "primarily generated": nearly every book now touches AI somewhere in drafting, editing or research, and self-reported disclosure will be unreliable at best. Which, conveniently for Spero, is precisely the problem his detection company sells against — worth keeping that incentive in view. There's also a real false-positive risk here: sloppy AI detection could end up blocking legitimate human authors. Still, expect more countries to pick a side on AI-authored books within the year.

Even the head of an AI-detection startup reaches for the oldest public heuristic — count the hands. It's a shaky tell: newer image generators have largely fixed anatomy, and real photos get falsely accused of being synthetic all the time. The telling part is the default reaction — you now assume 'AI' on sight, and the burden of proof flips onto whoever posted the image. That's exactly the 'liar's dividend' environment where provenance standards like C2PA and proper detectors matter far more than finger-counting. A light post, but it captures the 2026 mood: nobody trusts pixels anymore.