For Christmas I got an intriguing gift from a good friend - my very own "very popular" book.

"Tech-Splaining for Dummies" (fantastic title) bears my name and my photo on its cover, and it has glowing evaluations.

Yet it was entirely written by AI, with a couple of simple prompts about me supplied by my friend Janet.

It's an intriguing read, and uproarious in parts. But it also meanders rather a lot, and is someplace between a self-help book and a stream of anecdotes.

It mimics my chatty design of writing, however it's also a bit repeated, and really verbose. It may have gone beyond Janet's triggers in collating information about me.

Several sentences start "as a leading innovation reporter ..." - cringe - which might have been scraped from an online bio.

There's likewise a mystical, repeated hallucination in the form of my cat (I have no family pets). And there's a metaphor on practically every page - some more random than others.

There are dozens of business online offering AI-book writing services. My book was from BookByAnyone.

When I called the chief executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he informed me he had sold around 150,000 personalised books, primarily in the US, since pivoting from assembling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.

A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller expenses ₤ 26. The firm utilizes its own AI tools to create them, based on an open source large language design.

I'm not asking you to purchase my book. Actually you can't - just Janet, funsilo.date who created it, can buy any further copies.

There is presently no barrier to anybody developing one in anyone's name, including stars - although Mr Mashiach states there are guardrails around violent content. Each book includes a printed disclaimer mentioning that it is imaginary, created by AI, and created "entirely to bring humour and happiness".

Legally, the copyright comes from the firm, however Mr Mashiach worries that the item is meant as a "customised gag present", and the books do not get offered even more.

He wishes to widen his variety, producing various categories such as sci-fi, and maybe providing an autobiography service. It's created to be a light-hearted kind of consumer AI - selling AI-generated goods to human consumers.

It's likewise a bit frightening if, like me, you compose for a living. Not least since it probably took less than a minute to create, and it does, definitely in some parts, sound much like me.

Musicians, akropolistravel.com authors, artists and actors worldwide have expressed alarm about their work being utilized to train generative AI tools that then produce similar material based upon it.

"We need to be clear, when we are discussing data here, we actually suggest human creators' life works," says Ed Newton Rex, creator of Fairly Trained, which projects for AI companies to respect developers' rights.

"This is books, this is short articles, this is images. It's works of art. It's records ... The whole point of AI training is to learn how to do something and after that do more like that."

In 2023 a song featuring AI-generated voices of Canadian vocalists Drake and The Weeknd went viral on social networks before being pulled from streaming platforms because it was not their work and they had not consented to it. It didn't stop the track's developer attempting to nominate it for a Grammy award. And despite the fact that the artists were phony, it was still extremely popular.

"I do not believe using generative AI for innovative purposes ought to be prohibited, however I do believe that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on people's work without consent must be banned," Mr Newton Rex includes. "AI can be really effective but let's construct it morally and fairly."

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In the UK some organisations - including the BBC - have selected to block AI designers from trawling their online material for training functions. Others have actually chosen to work together - the Financial Times has partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI for instance.

The UK federal government is considering an overhaul of the law that would permit AI developers to use developers' material on the internet to assist establish their designs, unless the rights holders pull out.

Ed Newton Rex describes this as "insanity".

He points out that AI can make advances in areas like defence, health care and logistics without trawling the work of authors, journalists and artists.

"All of these things work without going and altering copyright law and destroying the incomes of the country's creatives," he argues.

Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in your home of Lords, is also highly against getting rid of copyright law for AI.

"Creative markets are wealth developers, 2.4 million jobs and a lot of joy," states the Baroness, who is likewise a consultant to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University.

"The federal government is weakening one of its finest carrying out markets on the vague guarantee of growth."

A federal government spokesperson stated: "No move will be made until we are definitely positive we have a practical plan that delivers each of our objectives: increased control for best holders to help them certify their material, access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK, and more openness for best holders from AI designers."

Under the UK federal government's new AI plan, a nationwide data library including public information from a broad variety of sources will likewise be made offered to AI scientists.

In the US the future of federal guidelines to control AI is now up in the air following President Trump's go back to the presidency.

In 2023 Biden signed an executive order that intended to increase the safety of AI with, amongst other things, firms in the sector required to share details of the workings of their systems with the US federal government before they are launched.

But this has now been reversed by Trump. It stays to be seen what Trump will do instead, but he is said to desire the AI sector to face less regulation.

This comes as a variety of claims against AI firms, and particularly against OpenAI, continue in the US. They have actually been gotten by everyone from the New York Times to authors, music labels, and even a comedian.

They declare that the AI firms broke the law when they took their content from the internet without their permission, and used it to train their systems.

The AI business argue that their actions fall under "fair usage" and are therefore exempt. There are a number of factors which can make up reasonable use - it's not a straight-forward meaning. But the AI sector is under increasing scrutiny over how it gathers training information and whether it ought to be paying for it.

If this wasn't all enough to contemplate, Chinese AI company DeepSeek has shaken the sector over the past week. It ended up being one of the most downloaded totally free app on Apple's US App Store.

DeepSeek claims that it developed its innovation for a fraction of the cost of the likes of OpenAI. Its success has actually raised security issues in the US, and threatens American's present dominance of the sector.

When it comes to me and a profession as an author, I believe that at the minute, if I really want a "bestseller" I'll still have to compose it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the existing weakness in generative AI tools for larger jobs. It is complete of mistakes and hallucinations, and it can be rather challenging to read in parts due to the fact that it's so verbose.

But offered how rapidly the tech is evolving, I'm not sure how long I can remain positive that my considerably slower human writing and modifying abilities, are much better.

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