For Christmas I got a fascinating present from a friend - my really own "best-selling" book.

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

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

It's an intriguing read, and uproarious in parts. But it likewise meanders quite a lot, and is someplace 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 really verbose. It may have exceeded Janet's prompts in collecting information about me.

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

There's likewise a strange, repeated hallucination in the form of my feline (I have no pets). And there's a on almost every page - some more random than others.

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

When I got in touch with the primary executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he informed me he had actually sold around 150,000 customised books, primarily in the US, considering that rotating from assembling 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 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 developed it, asteroidsathome.net can order any additional copies.

There is currently no barrier to anybody producing one in anyone's name, including celebrities - although Mr Mashiach states there are guardrails around violent material. Each book contains a printed disclaimer specifying that it is fictional, created by AI, and designed "solely to bring humour and joy".

Legally, the copyright belongs to the company, but Mr Mashiach stresses that the item is planned as a "personalised gag present", and the books do not get offered even more.

He hopes to widen his range, creating different categories such as sci-fi, and maybe using an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted type of consumer AI - selling AI-generated goods to human clients.

It's also a bit terrifying if, like me, visualchemy.gallery you write for a living. Not least due to the fact that it most likely took less than a minute to produce, and it does, definitely in some parts, sound similar to me.

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

"We should be clear, when we are discussing data here, we actually mean human developers' life works," states Ed Newton Rex, creator of Fairly Trained, which projects for AI firms to regard creators' rights.

"This is books, this is short articles, this is images. It's works of art. It's records ... The entire point of AI training is to learn how to do something and then do more like that."

In 2023 a tune including AI-generated voices of Canadian vocalists Drake and lespoetesbizarres.free.fr The Weeknd went viral on social media 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 choose it for a Grammy award. And despite the fact that the artists were fake, it was still wildly popular.

"I do not think making use of generative AI for imaginative functions should be banned, but I do believe that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on individuals's work without approval must be banned," Mr Newton Rex adds. "AI can be really powerful however let's build it morally and fairly."

OpenAI says Chinese competitors utilizing 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 picked to block AI designers from trawling their online material for training purposes. Others have actually decided to collaborate - the Financial Times has partnered with ChatGPT developer OpenAI for instance.

The UK federal government is thinking about an overhaul of the law that would enable AI designers to utilize developers' content on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders choose 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, reporters 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 house of Lords, is also highly against eliminating copyright law for AI.

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

"The government is undermining one of its best performing industries on the vague promise of growth."

A government spokesperson stated: "No relocation will be made until we are definitely positive we have a practical strategy that provides each of our goals: 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 openness for ideal holders from AI developers."

Under the UK federal government's new AI plan, a nationwide data library consisting of public data from a large range of sources will likewise be offered to AI scientists.

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 aimed to boost the safety of AI with, among other things, firms in the sector needed to share details of the functions of their systems with the US federal government before they are released.

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

This comes as a variety of suits versus AI companies, and particularly versus OpenAI, continue in the US. They have been taken out by everybody from the New york city Times to authors, music labels, and even a comedian.

They declare that the AI companies broke the law when they took their material 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 for that reason exempt. There are a number of aspects which can constitute 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 must be spending for it.

If this wasn't all adequate to ponder, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has shaken the sector over the previous week. It became the most downloaded complimentary app on Apple's US App Store.

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

As for me and a profession as an author, I believe that at the minute, if I truly want a "bestseller" I'll still have to write it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the present weakness in generative AI tools for bigger jobs. It has lots of mistakes and hallucinations, and it can be rather challenging to read in parts due to the fact that it's so long-winded.

But provided how rapidly the tech is progressing, I'm not exactly sure for how long I can remain positive that my significantly slower human writing and editing abilities, are better.

Register for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the greatest advancements in international innovation, with analysis from BBC correspondents all over the world.

Outside the UK? Register here.