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

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

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

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

It simulates my chatty design of writing, however it's likewise a bit repetitive, and really verbose. It may have gone beyond Janet's prompts in collecting data about me.

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

There's likewise a mysterious, repetitive hallucination in the type of my feline (I have no family pets). And there's a metaphor 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 president Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he informed me he had sold around 150,000 customised books, primarily 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 costs ₤ 26. The company uses its own AI tools to produce them, based on an open source large language design.

I'm not asking you to purchase my book. Actually you can't - only Janet, who produced it, can buy any further copies.

There is currently no barrier to anyone producing one in anyone's name, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile