For Christmas I received a fascinating gift from a good friend - my extremely own "best-selling" book.
"Tech-Splaining for Dummies" (excellent title) bears my name and my photo on its cover, and it has glowing evaluations.
Yet it was totally written by AI, with a few easy prompts about me provided by my pal Janet.
It's an intriguing read, and astroberry.io uproarious in parts. But it also meanders quite a lot, and is somewhere in between a self-help book and a stream of anecdotes.
It mimics my chatty style of composing, but it's likewise a bit recurring, and really verbose. It might have gone beyond Janet's triggers in looking at data about me.
Several sentences begin "as a leading technology reporter ..." - cringe - which might have been scraped from an online bio.
There's likewise a strange, repeated hallucination in the kind of my cat (I have no animals). And there's a metaphor on nearly 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 contacted the chief executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he told me he had offered around 150,000 customised books, mainly in the US, because pivoting from compiling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.
A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller expenses ₤ 26. The company uses its own AI tools to produce them, based on an open source large language design.
I'm not asking you to purchase my book. Actually you can't - only Janet, who created it, can buy any additional copies.
There is currently no barrier to anyone developing one in any person's name, including celebs - although Mr Mashiach states there are guardrails around violent content. Each book contains a printed disclaimer mentioning that it is imaginary, produced by AI, and designed "solely to bring humour and pleasure".
Legally, the copyright comes from the firm, videochatforum.ro but Mr Mashiach worries that the product is intended as a "personalised gag gift", and the books do not get offered further.
He intends to expand his range, producing various genres such as sci-fi, and maybe offering an autobiography service. It's developed to be a light-hearted type of consumer AI - selling AI-generated items to human consumers.
It's likewise a bit terrifying if, like me, you write for a living. Not least due to the fact that it most likely took less than a minute to generate, and it does, certainly in some parts, sound similar to me.
Musicians, authors, artists and stars worldwide have actually expressed alarm about their work being used to train generative AI tools that then churn out comparable material based upon it.
"We must be clear, when we are speaking about data here, we actually imply human developers' life works," states Ed Newton Rex, creator of Fairly Trained, which campaigns for AI companies to regard developers' rights.
"This is books, this is articles, this is photos. It's artworks. It's records ... The whole point of AI training is to find out 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 networks before being pulled from streaming platforms due to the fact that it was not their work and they had not granted it. It didn't stop the track's creator attempting to nominate it for a Grammy award. And even though the artists were phony, it was still wildly popular.
"I do not believe making use of generative AI for creative functions must be prohibited, however 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 relatively."
OpenAI says Chinese competitors using its work for their AI apps
DeepSeek: The Chinese AI app that has the world talking
China's DeepSeek AI shakes industry and damages America's swagger
In the UK some organisations - including the BBC - have selected to obstruct AI developers from trawling their online content for training functions. Others have actually chosen to team up - the Financial Times has actually partnered with ChatGPT developer OpenAI for example.
The UK government is considering an overhaul of the law that would enable AI designers to use creators' content on the web to assist develop their designs, unless the rights holders pull out.
Ed Newton Rex explains this as "madness".
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 changing copyright law and ruining the livelihoods of the nation's creatives," he argues.
Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in your home of Lords, is also strongly against getting rid of copyright law for AI.
"Creative industries are wealth creators, 2.4 million jobs and an entire lot of happiness," says 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 performing markets on the vague pledge of growth."
A government spokesperson said: "No relocation will be made till we are absolutely confident we have a practical plan that delivers each of our objectives: increased control for best holders to help them license their content, access to high-quality product to train leading AI designs in the UK, and more transparency for right holders from AI developers."
Under the UK federal government's new AI plan, a nationwide information library including public data from a vast array of sources will also be offered to AI scientists.
In the US the future of federal rules to manage AI is now up in the air following President Trump's return to the presidency.
In 2023 Biden signed an executive order that aimed to enhance the safety of AI with, to name a few 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 stays to be seen what Trump will do instead, however he is said to desire the AI sector to face less regulation.
This comes as a number of claims against AI firms, and particularly versus OpenAI, continue in the US. They have been secured by everybody from the New york city Times to authors, music labels, and even a .
They declare that the AI companies broke the law when they took their content from the web without their permission, and utilized it to train their systems.
The AI companies argue that their actions fall under "fair usage" and are therefore exempt. There are a number of aspects which can make up fair usage - it's not a straight-forward meaning. But the AI sector is under increasing examination over how it collects training information and whether it ought to be spending for it.
If this wasn't all adequate to contemplate, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has shaken the sector over the previous week. It became one of the most downloaded complimentary app on Apple's US App Store.
DeepSeek claims that it established 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 existing supremacy of the sector.
When it comes to me and a career as an author, I believe that at the moment, if I really desire 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 bigger projects. It has lots of mistakes and hallucinations, and it can be rather challenging to read in parts since it's so verbose.
But given how rapidly the tech is developing, I'm not sure how long I can remain positive that my significantly slower human writing and modifying abilities, are better.
Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the most significant developments in international innovation, with analysis from BBC reporters around the globe.
Outside the UK? Register here.
1
How an AI written Book Shows why the Tech 'Horrifies' Creatives
Greg Firkins edited this page 2 months ago