For Christmas I got an interesting present from a buddy - my extremely own "best-selling" book.

"Tech-Splaining for Dummies" (terrific title) bears my name and my picture on its cover, and it has radiant reviews.

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

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

It mimics my chatty style of writing, but it's also a bit recurring, and extremely verbose. It may have gone beyond Janet's triggers in collating data about me.

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

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

There are lots of business online offering AI-book composing 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, primarily in the US, because rotating from compiling 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 generate them, based on an open source large language design.

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

There is currently no barrier to anyone producing one in any person's name, consisting of stars - although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around abusive material. Each book includes a printed disclaimer specifying that it is imaginary, created by AI, and created "entirely to bring humour and happiness".

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

He hopes to expand his variety, creating different categories such as sci-fi, and perhaps offering an autobiography service. It's developed to be a light-hearted kind of customer AI - selling AI-generated items to human consumers.

It's also a bit scary if, like me, you write for a living. Not least because it most likely took less than a minute to generate, and it does, definitely in some parts, sound similar to me.

Musicians, authors, artists and stars worldwide have revealed alarm about their work being used to train generative AI tools that then produce similar material based upon it.

"We must be clear, when we are discussing information here, we in fact indicate human developers' life works," says Ed Newton Rex, creator of Fairly Trained, which projects for AI companies to respect developers' rights.

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

In 2023 a tune including 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 actually not consented to it. It didn't stop the track's developer trying to nominate it for a Grammy award. And although the artists were fake, it was still hugely popular.

"I do not believe using generative AI for creative functions must be banned, but I do think that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on people's work without approval should be banned," Mr Newton Rex adds. "AI can be very powerful however let's build it fairly and fairly."

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In the UK some organisations - consisting of the BBC - have actually chosen to block AI developers from trawling their online content for training functions. Others have chosen to collaborate - the Financial Times has partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI for instance.

The UK federal government is thinking about an overhaul of the law that would permit AI designers to use creators' content on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders pull out.

Ed Newton Rex explains this as "insanity".

He mentions that AI can make advances in areas like defence, health care 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 country's creatives," he argues.

Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in your home of Lords, is also highly versus eliminating copyright law for AI.

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

"The government is weakening among its finest carrying out industries on the unclear promise of development."

A federal government representative said: "No relocation will be made up until we are absolutely positive we have a useful plan that provides each of our goals: increased control for ideal holders to assist them license their content, access to top quality material to train leading AI designs 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 containing public data from a broad range of sources will likewise be provided to AI researchers.

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

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

But this has now been reversed by Trump. It remains to be seen what Trump will do instead, however he is said to want the AI sector to deal with less policy.

This comes as a number of suits versus AI firms, and particularly versus OpenAI, continue in the US. They have actually been taken out by everyone from the New york city Times to authors, music labels, and even a comedian.

They declare that the AI companies broke the law when they took their material from the web without their consent, and used it to train their systems.

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

If this wasn't all enough to consider, Chinese AI firm 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 declares that it developed its technology for a fraction of the price of the likes of OpenAI. Its success has raised security issues in the US, and threatens American's present dominance of the sector.

As for me and addsub.wiki a profession as an author, I think that at the minute, if I truly desire a "bestseller" I'll still have to write it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the current weakness in generative AI tools for bigger tasks. It is full of mistakes and hallucinations, and it can be rather difficult to check out in parts due to the fact that it's so long-winded.

But provided how quickly the tech is progressing, I'm not sure for how long I can stay positive that my considerably slower human writing and modifying skills, are better.

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