Most retailers run from AI controversy. Barnes & Noble's CEO just walked toward it.
In an interview that aired this week on TODAY, James Daunt told Jenna Bush Hager that he has no problem selling AI-written books in his stores, as long as they're labeled and don't rip anyone off.
Daunt's stance comes down to one rule: be honest about it.
He's fine selling AI-generated books as long as they don't pretend to be something they aren't and don't lift work from other writers. When asked if some of B&N's roughly 300,000 titles are already AI-written, Daunt said "The chances are that they are, but we're not really conscious of them."
In English: he doesn't know which of his books were written by a human, and he isn't pretending to.
That kind of honesty from a CEO is rare, but it also opens the door to a louder fight over disclosure. The label rules a retailer the size of B&N follows could shape what every other bookstore ends up doing.
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Daunt added that he doesn't think AI books will get much traction at the moment, but that part got buried under the louder admission.
What didn't get buried was the part about AI books possibly already being on the shelf, which sent authors and readers to social media to accuse the chain of sidelining human writers in favor of cheaper machine-made copies.
Yet B&N's own publishing arm, B&N Press, already requires authors to disclose AI involvement before publishing. The new question is whether that disclosure is actually making it from the upload form onto the cover of the book.
The CEO's bluntness is also a flex, since Barnes & Noble is in the middle of one of its best stretches in two decades.
The chain opened more than 60 new stores in 2025, with another 60 arriving in 2026, bringing its US footprint past 700 locations. That's a chain in growth mode while most of brick-and-mortar retail is shrinking.
That growth runs through Elliott Management, the activist investor that owns B&N, also bought Waterstones in the UK, and put Daunt in charge of both. The playbook of running each store like a curated indie bookshop has driven the turnaround, and that track record is showing up in how Daunt talks to the press.
The bigger story isn't whether B&N stocks AI-written books, since most major publishers will end up with the same question on their desks. The real story is whether readers care enough to walk away if disclosure rules stay loose.
If they do, expect the labeling rules to tighten fast.
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