How writers are reacting to Substack’s AI transparency tools
Honest conversation, the first wave of “How I make this” statements, and an upcoming series on how publishers are using and feeling about AI
Substack <[email protected]>
Share
Substack promotes its AI transparency tools, which allow readers to scan text for AI assistance and enable writers to disclose their creative process. The company aims to bring transparency to AI use in writing, helping authors get credit for their work and readers make informed choices. Substack features reactions from various writers on the topic of AI disclosure and its impact on writing.
What the raw message shows
From the headers
- Sent with
-
Substack
See it in the headers
Across Substack's email
- Sends
- About 2 a week
- DMARC
-
Enforced, reject
Mail failing authentication is refused.
The copy
589 words · about 2 min to read
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
How writers are reacting to Substack’s AI transparency tools
Honest conversation, the first wave of “How I make this” statements, and an upcoming series on how publishers are using and feeling about AI
READ IN APP
“Spot the difference” by Joro Chen, Brand Designer at Substack
Earlier this week, we announced a feature that allows readers to scan text published to Substack to see how much of it is estimated to be written by hand or with AI assistance. We also launched tools for publishers, including the ability to run the program—Pangram—on drafts prior to publication, disable scanning on a post-by-post basis, and add a “How I make this” statement explaining their creative process to set expectations for their readers. These features do not use publisher content, either through Substack or Pangram, to train generative AI models and are now available on web, iOS, and Android.
Norms around AI use and its disclosure are unsettled. But we have made the assessment that while the use of AI isn’t necessarily a problem, a lack of transparency around it definitely is. Our aim is to help writers get credit for the work that’s theirs and help their audiences make more informed choices about what they spend their time on.
Substack has long been home to brilliant writers and thinkers exploring questions about AI disclosure, making a livelihood through writing, and whether technology can replace human effort in art.
Archie Hall, a columnist at The Economist, is highly bullish on AI’s economic upside but recoiled from AI-written prose: “We should shun AI writing even if it is perfectly bearable to read,” he wrote. Science fiction writer Lincoln Michelevangelized intention, and said that AI output can’t be art because it isn’t the product of choices. The Hinternet Editorial Boardproposed a Mohs-style scale of AI reliance, from 0 to 10, and Sam Krissmenaced, “If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you.”
Writers have methodically tested what AI can and can’t generate. Freddie deBoerran an experiment to track if an LLM could write the parts of a novel that aren’t the prose itself. Engineer, founder, and former venture capitalist Rohit Krishnantried to measure the statistical signature of literary style, interested to see if a model could eventually learn to write with it. Literature professor Hollis Robbinsexamined two very different approaches to LLM-generated poetry and asked whether either gets anywhere close to greatness: “For poets, edge cases are the poem.” Elle Griffinwrote a fictional day-in-the-life in a future AI utopia, and Andrea Bartz, the named plaintiff in Bartz v. Anthropic, the case that resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement for writers, wrote her own detailed argument against generative AI today.
Writer Teddy (T.M.) Brownnamed an economic reality rather than a spiritual one—that most commercial writing was never really creative expression to begin with, so what’s disappearing is a livelihood, not a soul: “I am less threatened by the presence of bad writing created by robot-equipped dullards than I am by the specter of there being no way to make a living as a writer at all.”
The common thread? We believe that human perspective is an essential ingredient of culture, and this will be true no matter how powerful AI becomes.
In the days since the AI scan feature was announced, we’ve seen many publishers putting the tools to use, and initial responses suggest that transparency is the right first step toward protecting writers and improving the experience for their readers.
The words as text: what a screen reader can follow, and all there is when images don't load.
What the headers say
Read from the message's own headers, as it arrived.
- Came from
-
v56.v5375b7fa.use4.send.mailgun.net
· 159.112.244.6
Substack's sending servers
- SPF
- Pass for mg-d1.substack.com
- DKIM
-
- Pass signed by mg-d1.substack.com
- DMARC
-
Pass for substack.com
Policy: reject
- Unsubscribe
-
One-click
Meets the Gmail and Yahoo rule for bulk senders.
- Complaints
-
Feedback loop set up
Mailbox providers can report spam complaints straight back to the sender.
Show all 28 headers Hide the headers
As received, minus the delivery side: the archive's own addresses show as [recipient], its mail servers as [receiver], signatures are left out and unsubscribe links trimmed to their host.
Route
- Received
- from v56.v5375b7fa.use4.send.mailgun.net (159.112.244.6) by [receiver] (cloudflare) id yTizF3bPuLpp for <[recipient]>; Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:14:51 +0000
- Received
- by 8be1c16446839fabddf94b39a097f70e9e7dcef08d7ae25a3d8f6d53ea3aa6e6 with HTTP id 6a639d884fc9b83664132eb6; Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:14:47 GMT
Authentication
- Received-SPF Authentication result
- pass ([receiver]: domain of [recipient]@mg-d1.substack.com designates 159.112.244.6 as permitted sender) receiver=[receiver]; client-ip=159.112.244.6; envelope-from="[recipient]@mg-d1.substack.com"; helo=v56.v5375b7fa.use4.send.mailgun.net;
- Authentication-Results Authentication result
- [receiver]; dkim=pass header.d=mg-d1.substack.com header.s=k1 header.b=Lg2fBOj8; dmarc=pass header.from=substack.com policy.dmarc=reject; spf=none ([receiver]: no SPF records found for [email protected]) smtp.helo=v56.v5375b7fa.use4.send.mailgun.net; spf=pass ([receiver]: domain of [recipient]@mg-d1.substack.com designates 159.112.244.6 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=[recipient]@mg-d1.substack.com; arc=none smtp.remote-ip=159.112.244.6
Platform
- X-Mailgun-Sid
- WyJkOWY3MSIsInN1YnN0YWNrQGluYm94YXJjaGl2ZS5vcmciLCIzOWIwOGM2Il0=
- X-Mailgun-Sending-Ip
- 159.112.244.6
- X-Mailgun-Batch-Id
- 6a639d875a750c9c58b1e053
- X-Mailgun-Tag
- post
- X-Mailgun-Track-Clicks
- false
- X-Mailgun-Variables
- {"category": "post", "email_generated_at": "1784913287279", "is_freemail": "true", "post_audience": "everyone", "post_id": "208261413", "post_type": "newsletter", "pub_community_enabled": "true", "publication_id": "1", "subdomain": "on", "user_id": "527064826"}
Unsubscribe and feedback
- Feedback-Id
- post-208261413:cat-post:pub-1:substack
- List-Owner
- <mailto:…@substack.com>
- List-Url
- <https://on.substack.com/…>
- List-Archive
- <https://on.substack.com/…>
- List-Id
- <on.substack.com>
- List-Post
- <https://on.substack.com/…>
- List-Unsubscribe
- <https://on.substack.com/…>
- List-Unsubscribe-Post
- List-Unsubscribe=One-Click
Message
- Mime-Version
- 1.0
- Content-Type
- multipart/alternative; boundary="65ca9fe5633dd9e93203a39c7a35e32a63115c786f83f9cc14788fa1a276"
- Subject
- How writers are reacting to Substack’s AI transparency tools
- From
- Substack <[email protected]>
- Message-Id Identifies Substack
- <[email protected]>
- Date
- Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:00:34 +0000
- Sender
- Substack <[email protected]>
- References
- <[email protected]>
- In-Reply-To
- <[email protected]>
- Reply-To
- Substack <reply+3fzrj9&8psttm&&9c819bdbdfe925340f6bd6780912c4bb34201f6b0ec2455424f426db11526a4a@mg1.substack.com>
More from Substack
All 28 emailsSimilar campaigns from other brands
Different brands running the same play. Compare any of them side by side.
Archived for reference and commentary. Substack, its logos and content are the property of their respective owners; Inbox Archive claims no affiliation and has disabled all links. If you own this content and would like it removed, get in touch.