Indian Court Orders Inquiry Into Tamil Nadu Library's Purchase of Suspected AI-Generated Books

The case began at Periyar Arivulagam, a new library in Coimbatore built for about 3 billion rupees ($34 million) and opened on October 16 by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay. Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan, author of Pyre and One Part Woman, visited it last month. In an online magazine, he later alleged that nearly 1,800 books in its Tamil section had come from a little-known publisher, Agal Vilakku Pathippagam. He said many carried unfamiliar author names, unusually high prices and questionable ISBNs.

The affair is one of the first public procurement cases to centre on suspected machine-written content. It shows how cheaply generated books, with fabricated facts and invented authorship, can get through institutional review and be paid for with public money. Tamil Nadu School Education Minister A Rajmohan has described it as potentially "India's first AI scam". He said the investigation will cover purchases at other public libraries across the state.

The errors cited so far are basic ones. One title, priced at 1,445 rupees for 300 pages, presents Naladiyar as a Tamil poet and philosopher. Naladiyar is in fact a classical collection of 400 four-line verses on ethics. Another book reportedly credits the ancient poem Madurai Kanchi to the wrong author. A book found at a library in Madurai names the economist Jean Drèze as its author. Drèze told The Hindu he had not written it. It has not been established whether AI was used to produce any of the disputed books, BBC News reported.

When BBC Tamil visited a Chennai address listed for Agal Vilakku and for a second publisher, Phoenix Publishing House, it found no signs for either business. A woman there confirmed that Agal Vilakku operated from the address. Its proprietor, identified only as Mohan, declined to comment because the matter is before the courts.

The state government has ordered an internal audit of public library collections. Rajmohan said 523 books had been removed from Chennai's Connemara Public Library after preliminary checks raised concerns about their authenticity and quality. Disputed titles have also been taken off the shelves at Periyar Arivulagam, and anti-corruption officials are examining procurement records and inspecting other libraries.

The case has also become a political dispute. The state government says the books were ordered under the previous administration led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and has said it will try to recover public money if wrongdoing is found. The DMK calls the allegations politically motivated and has itself called for an investigation.

More than 160 writers, researchers, artists and publishers have signed a joint statement. It calls for an independent inquiry, publication of procurement records, an audit of library collections across Tamil Nadu and recovery of any misused funds. The signatories ask how the books passed a selection process that is supposed to involve expert committees, price negotiations and several levels of review. The anti-corruption agency's findings on that question are the next thing to watch.