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

"Tech-Splaining for Dummies" (terrific 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 basic prompts about me supplied by my buddy Janet.

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

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

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

There's also a strange, repetitive hallucination in the type of my feline (I have no pets). And there's a metaphor on practically 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 primary executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he informed me he had offered around 150,000 customised books, primarily in the US, given that rotating from assembling 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 produced it, can purchase any further copies.

There is currently no barrier to anybody creating one in anyone's name, including celebs - although Mr Mashiach states there are guardrails around abusive material. Each book includes a printed disclaimer specifying that it is fictional, developed by AI, and designed "entirely to bring humour and delight".

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

He intends to widen his variety, generating various categories such as sci-fi, and maybe providing an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted form of customer AI - selling AI-generated products to human consumers.

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

Musicians, authors, asteroidsathome.net artists and actors worldwide have revealed alarm about their work being utilized to train generative AI tools that then produce comparable material based upon it.

"We must be clear, when we are talking about information here, we in fact imply human creators' life works," states Ed Newton Rex, creator of Fairly Trained, which projects for AI companies to regard developers' rights.

"This is books, this is posts, this is pictures. It's masterpieces. It's records ... The entire point of AI training is to discover how to do something and after that 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 since 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 despite the fact that the artists were fake, it was still extremely popular.

"I do not think making use of generative AI for imaginative functions should be prohibited, but I do believe that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on people's work without permission should be banned," Mr Newton Rex includes. "AI can be really powerful however let's construct it ethically and fairly."

OpenAI says Chinese rivals using its work for their AI apps

DeepSeek: The Chinese AI app that has the world talking

China's DeepSeek AI shakes industry and dents America's swagger

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

The UK federal government is considering an overhaul of the law that would enable AI developers to utilize developers' content on the internet to help develop their designs, unless the rights holders choose out.

Ed Newton Rex describes this as "insanity".

He mentions 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 altering copyright law and messing up the incomes of the nation's creatives," he argues.

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

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

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

A federal government representative stated: "No move will be made until we are definitely positive we have a useful strategy that delivers each of our objectives: increased control for ideal holders to assist them certify their material, access to high-quality product to train leading AI models in the UK, and more openness for best holders from AI developers."

Under the UK federal government's brand-new AI plan, a nationwide information library containing public information from a wide range of sources will likewise be offered 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 safety of AI with, to name a few things, firms in the sector required to share information of the functions 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, but he is said to want the AI sector to deal with less policy.

This comes as a variety of claims against AI firms, and particularly versus 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 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 number of elements which can make up fair use - it's not a straight-forward definition. But the AI sector is under increasing examination over how it collects training data and whether it need to be spending for it.

If this wasn't all sufficient to consider, Chinese AI company DeepSeek has actually shaken the sector over the previous week. It became 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.

When it comes to me and a profession as an author, I believe that at the moment, if I actually want a "bestseller" I'll still need to write it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the existing weak point in generative AI tools for bigger projects. It has lots of mistakes and hallucinations, and it can be quite difficult to read in parts because it's so long-winded.

But offered how rapidly the tech is progressing, I'm not sure the length of time I can remain confident that my considerably slower human writing and modifying abilities, are much better.

Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the most significant developments in international technology, with analysis from BBC reporters worldwide.

Outside the UK? Register here.