The headline here is a bit misleading, what he actually said was:

"Who's to know? [Technology firms] are spending trillions and trillions on AI and maybe it's going to produce the next War and Peace.

"And if people want to read that book, AI-generated or not, we will be selling it - as long as it doesn't pretend to [be] something that it isn't.

"We as booksellers would certainly naturally and instinctively disdain it," Daunt said.

Readers value a connection with the author "that does require a real person", he added. Any AI-generated book would always be clearly labelled as such.

My revised headline is:

Waterstones boss would rather not sell books generated by AI, but might if they are correctly labelled.