For I got a fascinating present from a buddy - my very own "very popular" book.

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

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

It's an intriguing read, and extremely amusing in parts. But it also meanders quite a lot, and is somewhere between a self-help book and a stream of anecdotes.

It simulates my chatty design of composing, but it's likewise a bit repeated, and very verbose. It might have exceeded Janet's triggers in looking at information about me.

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

There's likewise a strange, repeated hallucination in the form of my feline (I have no animals). And there's a metaphor on nearly 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 personalised books, primarily in the US, because pivoting from putting together AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.

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

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

There is presently no barrier to anybody developing one in anybody's name, consisting of stars - although Mr Mashiach states there are guardrails around abusive material. Each book includes a printed disclaimer stating that it is fictional, developed by AI, and developed "solely to bring humour and pleasure".

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

He wants to expand his range, producing various categories such as sci-fi, and perhaps providing an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted kind of customer AI - offering AI-generated goods to human consumers.

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

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

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

"This is books, this is posts, this is images. It's works of art. 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 media 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 developer trying to nominate it for a Grammy award. And although the artists were phony, it was still wildly popular.

"I do not think using generative AI for creative functions should be prohibited, however I do think that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on individuals's work without authorization need to be banned," Mr Newton Rex adds. "AI can be extremely effective 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 collaborate - the Financial Times has actually partnered with ChatGPT developer OpenAI for instance.

The UK government is considering an overhaul of the law that would permit AI designers to use creators' content on the web to help develop their designs, unless the rights holders pull out.

Ed Newton Rex explains this as "madness".

He explains that AI can make advances in locations like defence, healthcare 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 country's creatives," he argues.

Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, is likewise strongly versus getting rid of copyright law for AI.

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

"The federal government is weakening among its best performing industries on the unclear promise of growth."

A government representative stated: "No move will be made until we are definitely confident we have a practical strategy that delivers each of our goals: increased control for best holders to assist them license their content, access to high-quality product to train leading AI models in the UK, and more transparency for right holders from AI developers."

Under the UK government's new AI plan, a nationwide information library consisting of public data from a wide variety of sources will also be provided to AI scientists.

In the US the future of federal rules 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 boost the security of AI with, amongst other things, firms in the sector required to share details of the workings of their systems with the US government before they are released.

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

This comes as a number of lawsuits versus AI companies, and especially against OpenAI, continue in the US. They have been secured by everyone from the New york city Times to authors, music labels, and even a comedian.

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

The AI companies argue that their actions fall under "reasonable use" and are therefore exempt. There are a number of elements which can constitute fair usage - it's not a straight-forward definition. But the AI sector [users.atw.hu](http://users.atw.hu/samp-info-forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=0cac5a0de552c4d6e7abc34bc1c9b10c&action=profile