wch-korea

For Christmas I received an interesting gift 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 reviews.

Yet it was totally written by AI, with a couple of simple prompts about me supplied by my pal Janet.

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

It mimics my chatty style of composing, but it's likewise a bit repeated, and very verbose. It might have exceeded Janet's prompts in collecting data about me.

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

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

There are dozens of companies online offering AI -book writing services. My book was from BookByAnyone.

When I contacted the president Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he told me he had sold around 150,000 personalised books, mainly 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 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 buy my book. Actually you can't - only Janet, who produced it, can order any more copies.

There is presently no barrier to anyone creating one in any person's name, consisting of stars - although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around violent content. Each book consists of a printed disclaimer stating that it is fictional, developed by AI, and created "exclusively to bring humour and happiness".

Legally, the copyright belongs to the company, however Mr Mashiach worries that the product is intended as a "personalised gag gift", and the books do not get offered even more.

He intends to expand his variety, producing different categories such as sci-fi, and possibly providing an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted form of consumer AI - offering AI-generated goods to human customers.

It's also a bit frightening if, like me, you write for a living. Not least because it probably took less than a minute to generate, and it does, certainly in some parts, sound just like me.

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

"We ought to be clear, when we are speaking about data here, we in fact indicate human creators' life works," says Ed Newton Rex, founder of Fairly Trained, which projects for AI companies to regard developers' rights.

"This is books, this is short articles, this is pictures. It's masterpieces. 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 song featuring 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 not granted it. It didn't stop the track's developer attempting to nominate it for a Grammy award. And despite the fact that the artists were phony, it was still hugely popular.

"I do not believe making use of generative AI for imaginative functions need to be prohibited, however I do believe that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on individuals's work without approval ought to be banned," Mr Newton Rex includes. "AI can be extremely effective but let's develop it fairly 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 - consisting of the BBC - have picked to block AI developers from trawling their online material for training purposes. Others have actually decided to collaborate - the Financial Times has actually partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI for example.

The UK government is thinking about an overhaul of the law that would enable AI to use creators' content on the web to help establish their models, iuridictum.pecina.cz unless the rights holders pull out.

Ed Newton Rex explains this as "insanity".

He mentions that AI can make advances in areas 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 ruining the incomes of the nation's creatives," he argues.

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

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

"The government is weakening among its finest performing markets on the unclear guarantee of growth."

A federal government spokesperson stated: "No move will be made up until we are absolutely positive we have a practical plan that provides each of our goals: increased control for right holders to help them accredit their content, access to top quality material to train leading AI designs in the UK, and more openness for right holders from AI developers."

Under the UK government's new AI strategy, a nationwide information library including public data from a large range of sources will also be made available 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 aimed to increase the security of AI with, to name a few things, firms in the sector needed to share details 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 rather, but he is stated to desire the AI sector to deal with less guideline.

This comes as a number of claims against AI companies, and particularly against OpenAI, continue in the US. They have been gotten by everyone from the New york city Times to authors, music labels, and even a comic.

They declare that the AI firms broke the law when they took their content from the web without their approval, 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 variety of elements which can make up fair use - it's not a straight-forward meaning. But the AI sector is under increasing examination over how it collects training information and whether it need to be paying for it.

If this wasn't all enough to ponder, Chinese AI company DeepSeek has actually shaken the sector over the past week. It ended up being one of the most downloaded complimentary app on Apple's US App Store.

DeepSeek declares that it established its technology for a portion of the rate of the likes of OpenAI. Its success has raised security concerns in the US, and threatens American's existing dominance of the sector.

As for me and a career as an author, I think that at the moment, if I really want a "bestseller" I'll still need to compose it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the present weak point in generative AI tools for larger jobs. It is complete of inaccuracies and hallucinations, and it can be rather tough to read in parts due to the fact that it's so long-winded.

But offered how rapidly the tech is developing, I'm not exactly sure the length of time I can stay confident that my considerably slower human writing and modifying skills, are better.

Register for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the most significant advancements in worldwide technology, with analysis from BBC reporters all over the world.

Outside the UK? Sign up here.