It mimics my chatty style of writing, but it's also a bit repetitive, and very verbose. It may have gone beyond Janet's prompts in collating data about me.
Several sentences begin "as a leading technology journalist…" – cringe – which could have been scraped from an online bio.
There's also a mysterious, repeated hallucination in the form of my cat (I have no pets). And there's a metaphor on almost 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 chief executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he told me he had sold around 150,000 personalised books, mainly in the US, since pivoting from compiling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.
A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller costs £26. The firm uses its own AI tools to generate them, based on an open source large language model.
I'm not asking you to buy my book. Actually you can't – only Janet, who created it, can order any further copies.
There is currently no barrier to anyone creating one in anybody's name, including celebrities – although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around abusive content. Each book contains a printed disclaimer stating that it is fictional, created by AI, and designed "solely to bring humour and joy".
Legally, the copyright belongs to the firm, but Mr Mashiach stresses that the product is intended as a "personalised gag gift", and the books do not get sold further.
He hopes to broaden his range, generating different genres such as sci-fi, and perhaps offering an autobiography service. It's designed to be a light-hearted form of consumer AI – selling AI-generated goods to human customers.
It's also a bit terrifying 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.
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