For Christmas I got a fascinating gift from a buddy - my extremely own "best-selling" book.

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

Yet it was entirely composed by AI, with a couple of basic prompts about me provided by my friend Janet.

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

It simulates my chatty style of writing, however it's likewise a bit repeated, and very verbose. It may have gone beyond Janet's prompts in collecting data about me.

Several sentences begin "as a leading technology reporter ..." - cringe - which could have been scraped from an online bio.

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

There are lots of companies online offering AI-book writing services. My book was from BookByAnyone.

When I called the president Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he told me he had offered around 150,000 customised books, mainly in the US, clashofcryptos.trade considering that rotating from compiling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.

A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller costs ₤ 26. The company uses its own AI tools to create them, based upon an open source large language design.

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

There is currently no barrier to anybody creating one in anyone's name, consisting of celebrities - although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around violent content. Each book consists of a printed disclaimer stating that it is imaginary, produced by AI, and created "entirely to bring humour and joy".

Legally, the copyright comes from the company, but Mr Mashiach stresses that the item is meant as a "personalised gag gift", and the books do not get sold further.

He intends to widen his range, generating various categories such as sci-fi, and maybe using an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted kind of consumer AI - offering AI-generated items to human consumers.

It's also a bit terrifying if, like me, you write for a living. Not least due to the fact that it probably took less than a minute to create, and it does, certainly in some parts, sound simply like me.

Musicians, authors, artists and actors worldwide have expressed alarm about their work being utilized to train generative AI tools that then churn out similar content based upon it.

"We must be clear, when we are speaking about data here, we in fact suggest human developers' life works," states Ed Newton Rex, founder of Fairly Trained, which campaigns for AI companies to regard developers' rights.

"This is books, this is short articles, this is pictures. It's artworks. It's records ... The entire point of AI training is to learn how to do something and then do more like that."

In 2023 a tune including AI-generated voices of Canadian singers Drake and The Weeknd went viral on social media before being pulled from streaming platforms because it was not their work and they had actually not granted it. It didn't stop the track's creator trying to choose it for a Grammy award. And although the artists were fake, it was still wildly popular.

"I do not believe using generative AI for creative purposes need to be prohibited, but I do believe that generative AI for these functions that is trained on individuals's work without consent should be banned," Mr Newton Rex adds. "AI can be extremely powerful however let's develop it fairly and fairly."

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In the UK some organisations - including the BBC - have actually chosen to block AI developers from trawling their online content for training purposes. Others have actually decided to team up - the Financial Times has actually partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI for instance.

The UK federal government is thinking about an overhaul of the law that would allow AI developers to utilize creators' material on the web to assist establish their models, unless the rights holders pull out.

Ed Newton Rex explains this as "madness".

He mentions that AI can make advances in locations like defence, healthcare and logistics without trawling the work of authors, reporters and artists.

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

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

"Creative markets are wealth creators, 2.4 million tasks and a great deal of delight," says the Baroness, who is also an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University.

"The federal government is weakening one of its best performing industries on the vague promise of development."

A federal government representative stated: "No relocation will be made up until we are absolutely positive we have a practical strategy that provides each of our goals: increased control for right holders to assist them certify their material, access to premium product to train leading AI designs in the UK, and more transparency for right holders from AI designers."

Under the UK government's new AI plan, a nationwide information library including public data from a large range of sources will also be provided to AI researchers.

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

In 2023 Biden signed an executive order that aimed to enhance the security of AI with, amongst other things, firms in the sector required to share details of the operations of their systems with the US government before they are released.

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

This comes as a number of claims against AI companies, and particularly against OpenAI, continue in the US. They have actually been secured 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 material from the web without their authorization, and used it to train their systems.

The AI companies argue that their actions fall under "fair use" and are therefore exempt. There are a number of factors which can make up reasonable usage - it's not a straight-forward definition. But the AI sector is under increasing examination over how it collects training information and whether it must be spending for it.

If this wasn't all adequate to ponder, Chinese AI company DeepSeek has shaken the sector over the previous week. It ended up being the many downloaded complimentary app on Apple's US App Store.

DeepSeek declares that it established 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 existing dominance of the sector.

When it comes to me and a career as an author, I think that at the minute, if I actually desire a "bestseller" I'll still have to compose it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the existing weak point in generative AI tools for larger projects. It has plenty of inaccuracies and hallucinations, and it can be quite difficult to read in parts due to the fact that it's so verbose.

But given how quickly the tech is developing, I'm uncertain the length of time I can stay confident that my significantly slower and editing abilities, are much better.

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