Tom Parker Bowles, Queen Camilla’s usually mild-mannered son, is preparing for battle.
To his horror, the author and Mail on Sunday restaurant critic discovered this week that he is being ‘shafted’ by technology giants who are plundering his books, without asking him first or deigning to pay a penny in royalties.
They are believed to have been using his works, which include titles such as Let’s Eat and The Year of Eating Dangerously, to train up artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Parker Bowles’s books are among a collection of more than 170,000 titles that form a dataset called Books3. The digital library includes fiction and non-fiction works from authors such as Stephen King and Zadie Smith.
By learning from these texts and their authors’ styles, format and tone, artificial intelligence systems would in the future then be able to generate their own books.
‘I have just found out that six of my books are being used to train bastard AI, without my permission, using the Books3 database,’ Parker Bowles reveals.
Tom Parker Bowles, Queen Camilla’s usually mild-mannered son, is preparing for battle
Parker Bowles’s books are among a collection of more than 170,000 titles that form a dataset called Books3
‘With no payment at all. Hundreds of thousands of other writers are being similarly shafted. Time to fight back.’
The stepson of King Charles tells me: ‘This is something that will affect every writer, past and present and future.’
Another of the authors affected, Sathnam Sanghera, whose books include The Boy With The Topknot and Marriage Material, declares: ‘The technology that threatens to make writers obsolete is being trained using our work and we’re not being paid for it.’
He adds: ‘Other book ‘data sets’ are reportedly being used to train other kinds of AI.
‘It opens up the nightmarish possibility that someone could use AI to produce, say, a book in my style, using tech trained on my work — and then have a bestseller without me getting any credit or payment at all.’
Eton and Oxford-educated Tom, 48, whose father Andrew Parker Bowles was Camilla’s first husband, is the author of at least seven food-related books and has appeared as a critic on the BBC’s MasterChef.
He cites his mother’s cooking skills and recipes as his inspiration.
Boynton bounces back with a busker
She fell in love with her co-star Rami Malek – who played Freddie Mercury – while appearing in Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
But now Lucy Boynton, 29, has found herself a real-life musician.
The privately educated actress is going out with 25-year-old Murdo Mitchell, a Scottish singer who started busking on the streets of Glasgow when he was ten years old.
The privately educated actress is going out with 25-year-old Murdo Mitchell, a Scottish singer who started busking on the streets of Glasgow
He was seen with his arm around journalist’s daughter Boynton after they had attended a London screening of the new film Golda, starring Dame Helen Mirren. Boynton tenderly stroked Mitchell’s fingers as he moved in for a kiss.
Last month, it was confirmed that she had split up with Malek, 42, after five years together.
The U.S. actor, who played the villain in the last James Bond film, No Time To Die, is now going out with Emma Corrin, 27, best known as Princess Diana in Netflix hit The Crown.
Dame Helen Mirren was ahead of her time when it comes to the fight for more diversity in showbusiness.
The Oscar winner, 78, has spoken of how she resigned as a board member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) 25 years ago. ‘There was this older guy, who was the chairman of the board,’ she explains.
‘We were talking about the need to bring more black actors into Rada, that there weren’t enough black actors. And he literally sat there and said, ‘We can’t do that. It would be cruel, because there aren’t the roles for them’. I resigned that day.’
Green light for F1 tycoon’s £30m mega-mansion
Formula 1 tycoon Ron Dennis has been given approval to build a £30million mega-mansion – complete with a ‘drivers’ resting area’ for his security team.
The former McLaren boss’s stately pile in Berkshire will have a Roman bath-style underground swimming pool and tunnel to his boat on the nearby Thames.
The basement will include a cinema, gym, plunge pool, steam room, sauna, massage room, entertaining suite, games room, wine cellar and gallery, with an access tunnel to a nearby gatehouse and a 75-space car park.
Dennis, 76, (pictured with girlfriend Carol Weatherall) bought the 175-acre Remenham plot after selling his share in McLaren for £275 million in 2017
But there will also be a touch of Downton Abbey, with a chef’s kitchen, a servery and butler’s kitchen, powder room, staff tea room, flowers room and even a presents and wrap room. The estate will also include a tree-lined drive, two lakes and an amphitheatre.
Dennis, 76, bought the 175-acre Remenham plot after selling his share in McLaren for £275 million in 2017. Wokingham Borough Council officials said: ‘Overall, the development would have an acceptable impact on the character of the countryside and the setting of the green belt.’