In the US the future of federal rules 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 required to share details of the workings of their systems with the US government before they are released.

But this has now been repealed by Trump., external It remains to be seen what Trump will do instead, but he is said to want the AI sector to face less regulation.

This comes as a number of lawsuits, external against AI firms, and particularly against OpenAI, continue in the US. They have been taken out by everyone from the New York Times to authors, music labels, and even a comedian.

They claim that the AI firms broke the law when they took their content from the internet without their consent, and used it to train their systems.

The AI companies argue that their actions fall under “fair use” and are therefore exempt. There are a number of factors which can constitute fair use – it’s not a straight-forward definition. But the AI sector is under increasing scrutiny over how it gathers training data and whether it should be paying for it.

If this wasn’t all enough to ponder, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has shaken the sector over the past week. It became the most downloaded free app on Apple’s US App Store.

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

As for me and a career as an author, I think that at the moment, if I really want a “bestseller” I’ll still have to write it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the current weakness in generative AI tools for bigger projects. It is full of inaccuracies and hallucinations, and it can be quite difficult to read in parts because it’s so long-winded.

But given how quickly the tech is evolving, I’m not sure how long I can remain confident that my considerably slower human writing and editing skills, are better.