We have reached the point where the Authors Guild, the professional association representing published novelists and nonfiction writers in North America, is planning to offer  its 15,000 members a new certificate they can place directly on their book covers.

About the size of literary award stickers or celebrity book club endorsements adorning the cover art of the latest bestseller, the certificate is a simple, round logo with two boldfaced words inside: “Human Authored.” As in, written by a human — and not artificial intelligence.

According to author Douglas Preston, a bestselling novelist and nonfiction writer and member of the Authors Guild Council, “It’s also a declaration of how important storytelling is to who we are as a species. And we’re not going to let machines elbow us aside and pretend to be telling us stories, when it’s just regurgitating literary vomitus.”

How we live now.