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For Christmas I got an interesting present from a good friend - my very own "best-selling" book.

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

Yet it was entirely written by AI, with a few simple prompts about me supplied by my pal Janet.

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

It imitates my chatty style of composing, however it's likewise a bit recurring, and extremely verbose. It may have surpassed Janet's prompts in collating data about me.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm not asking you to buy my book. Actually you can't - just Janet, who produced it, can buy any additional copies.

There is presently no barrier to anyone developing one in name, consisting of stars - although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around abusive content. Each book consists of a printed disclaimer mentioning that it is imaginary, created by AI, and designed "solely to bring humour and pleasure".

Legally, the copyright belongs to the company, but Mr Mashiach stresses that the item is intended as a "customised gag gift", and the books do not get sold even more.

He wishes to broaden his variety, creating various categories such as sci-fi, and possibly offering an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted kind of consumer AI - selling AI -generated items to human clients.

It's also a bit scary if, townshipmarket.co.za 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 content based upon it.

"We need to be clear, when we are speaking about data here, we really imply human creators' life works," says Ed Newton Rex, founder of Fairly Trained, which campaigns for AI firms to regard creators' rights.

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

In 2023 a tune featuring AI -generated voices of Canadian singers Drake and The Weeknd went viral on social networks before being pulled from streaming platforms due to the fact that 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 despite the fact that the artists were phony, it was still extremely popular.

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

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In the UK some organisations - consisting of the BBC - have actually picked to obstruct AI designers from trawling their online content for training purposes. Others have actually decided to work together - the Financial Times has actually partnered with ChatGPT developer OpenAI for example.

The UK federal government is thinking about an overhaul of the law that would allow AI designers to utilize developers' material on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders opt out.

Ed Newton Rex describes this as "insanity".

He explains 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 the House of Lords, is also strongly against eliminating copyright law for AI.

"Creative industries are wealth developers, 2.4 million jobs and a great deal of happiness," states the Baroness, who is also an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University.

"The federal government is weakening among its finest carrying out markets on the unclear pledge of growth."

A federal government representative stated: "No relocation will be made till we are definitely positive we have a practical plan that provides each of our goals: increased control for best holders to assist them certify their material, access to top quality material 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, bbarlock.com a nationwide information library including public information from a vast array of sources will also 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 go back to the presidency.

In 2023 Biden signed an executive order that aimed to boost the security of AI with, among other things, companies in the sector needed to share information of the workings of their systems with the US federal government before they are released.

But this has now been repealed by Trump. It remains to be seen what Trump will do rather, however he is stated to desire the AI sector to deal with less guideline.

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

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

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

If this wasn't all adequate to ponder, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has actually shaken the sector over the previous week. It became one of the most downloaded totally free app on Apple's US App Store.

DeepSeek declares that it established its innovation for a fraction of the rate of the similarity OpenAI. Its success has raised security issues in the US, and threatens American's existing supremacy of the sector.

As for me and a career as an author, I believe that at the moment, if I truly want a "bestseller" I'll still need to write it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the present weak point in generative AI tools for larger projects. It has plenty of errors and hallucinations, and it can be rather tough to check out in parts because it's so long-winded.

But offered how quickly the tech is developing, I'm uncertain how long I can remain positive that my considerably slower human writing and editing skills, are much better.

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