For Christmas I received a fascinating present from a pal - my extremely own "very popular" book.

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

Yet it was completely written by AI, with a few easy triggers about me provided by my buddy Janet.

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

It imitates my chatty design of writing, however it's also a bit repetitive, and really verbose. It might have surpassed Janet's prompts in collating information about me.

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

There's also a mysterious, repeated hallucination in the kind of my cat (I have no pets). And there's a metaphor on practically 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 got in touch with the president Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he informed me he had sold around 150,000 personalised books, mainly in the US, since rotating from assembling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.

A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller expenses ₤ 26. The firm uses its own AI tools to produce them, based on an open source big 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 anyone's name, including stars - although Mr Mashiach states there are guardrails around violent material. Each book includes a printed disclaimer mentioning that it is imaginary, created by AI, and [smfsimple.com](https://www.smfsimple.com/ultimateportaldemo/index.php?action=profile