How An AI-written Book Shows Why The Tech Horrifies Creatives

For Christmas I received an interesting gift from a buddy - my very 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 entirely written by AI, with a couple of basic prompts about me provided by my friend Janet.


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


It simulates my chatty design of writing, but it's also a bit repeated, and really verbose. It might have gone beyond Janet's prompts in looking at data about me.


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


There's also a mysterious, repetitive hallucination in the form of my cat (I have no animals). 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 called the primary executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he informed me he had actually offered around 150,000 personalised books, primarily in the US, given that rotating from putting together 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 upon an open source big 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 presently no barrier to anybody producing one in anybody's name, including celebrities - although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around abusive content. Each book includes a printed disclaimer specifying that it is imaginary, produced by AI, and created "entirely to bring humour and joy".


Legally, the copyright belongs to the firm, but Mr Mashiach stresses that the product is intended as a "customised gag gift", and the books do not get sold further.


He intends to broaden his range, producing various categories such as sci-fi, and possibly offering an autobiography service. It's created to be a light-hearted type of customer AI - offering AI-generated items to human customers.


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


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


"We ought to be clear, when we are discussing information here, we actually mean 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 posts, this is pictures. It's artworks. It's records ... The entire point of AI training is to learn how to do something and after that do more like that."


In 2023 a tune including AI-generated voices of Canadian vocalists 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 fake, it was still wildly popular.


"I do not think the use of generative AI for innovative functions should be prohibited, however I do believe that generative AI for these functions that is trained on individuals's work without permission ought to be banned," Mr Newton Rex includes. "AI can be extremely 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 - consisting of the BBC - have actually selected to block AI designers 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 government is considering an overhaul of the law that would allow AI designers to utilize creators' material on the web to assist establish their models, unless the rights holders opt out.


Ed Newton Rex explains this as "insanity".


He explains that AI can make advances in areas like defence, healthcare and logistics without trawling the work of authors, reporters and artists.


"All of these things work without going and changing copyright law and ruining the incomes of the nation's creatives," he argues.


Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, is also highly versus removing copyright law for AI.


"Creative markets are wealth developers, 2.4 million jobs and an entire lot of happiness," states the Baroness, who is also a consultant to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University.


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


A federal government representative said: "No relocation will be made until we are definitely confident we have a useful plan that provides each of our objectives: increased control for best holders to help them certify their content, access to top quality material to train leading AI designs in the UK, and more transparency for ideal holders from AI designers."


Under the UK federal government's brand-new AI plan, a nationwide information library consisting of public information from a wide variety of sources will likewise be made available to AI scientists.


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 increase the safety of AI with, amongst other things, firms in the sector required to share information of the functions of their systems with the US federal government before they are launched.


But this has actually now been reversed by Trump. It stays to be seen what Trump will do rather, but he is said to want the AI sector to deal with less policy.


This comes as a variety of suits against AI companies, forum.pinoo.com.tr and particularly versus OpenAI, continue in the US. They have actually been secured by everyone from the New york city Times to authors, music labels, and forum.batman.gainedge.org even a comedian.


They declare that the AI companies broke the law when they took their content from the web without their consent, and used 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 constitute reasonable usage - it's not a straight-forward definition. But the AI sector is under increasing analysis over how it collects training data and whether it should be paying for it.


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


DeepSeek claims that it established its technology for a fraction of the cost of the likes of OpenAI. Its success has raised security concerns in the US, and threatens American's current dominance of the sector.


When it comes to me and a career as an author, I believe that at the moment, if I actually desire a "bestseller" I'll still have to compose it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the existing weak point in generative AI tools for bigger tasks. It has plenty of mistakes and hallucinations, and it can be quite difficult to check out in parts because it's so long-winded.


But provided how rapidly the tech is progressing, I'm not sure how long I can stay positive that my considerably slower human writing and modifying abilities, are better.


Register for our newsletter to follow the greatest advancements in international innovation, with analysis from BBC reporters worldwide.


Outside the UK? Sign up here.