The Know Daily - Monday 15 December 2025

_{Read in 4m 21s ∙ Listening to Taylor Swift ∙}

White storks are set to return to London for the first time in centuries. Plans are underway to reintroduce the iconic birds to Barking and Dagenham, reconnecting the capital with a species that was once woven into its landscape. It’s part of a bigger rewilding project in East London, which will also see beavers return to the area.

📖 AI and novels

There’s growing momentum to protect human creativity, after research backed by the University of Cambridge found around half of UK novelists think AI could impact their work if more isn’t done.

Tell me more.
Almost 60% of the novelists surveyed said they know their work has already been used to train AI without their consent or payment, while a third reported a dip in income due to reduced opportunities or loss of writing-adjacent gigs. However, 80% of the novelists also said they understand the benefits of AI, particularly for simplifying and speeding up research and admin tasks.

What’s the bigger issue?
It’s less about authors using AI as a tool and more about when whole novels are generated by machines and released into the world as if they were human-made. That raises tricky questions about value, originality and trust. If books can be produced at scale, quickly and cheaply, it risks flooding the market with content that looks like storytelling but lacks lived experience behind it.

For readers, that matters. Stories don’t just entertain, they help us make sense of our emotions and identities. Those layers come from observing and connecting with the world around us and the things humans live through rather than a bot calculates. While AI can convincingly imitate style and structure, it doesn’t have a childhood, a breakup, or a quiet moment on a bus that turns into a paragraph that stays with you for years.

What’s being done about it?
There’s real momentum in the creative industries to assert the value of human authorship. In the US, organisations like the Authors Guild have launched a “Human Authored” certification that lets writers stamp their books as genuinely written by them. In the UK, publishers and startups are exploring similar ideas (like an “Organic Literature” stamp), and groups are pushing for transparent licensing models where authors can opt in and get paid if their work is used to train AI. There’s also legal action and advocacy aimed at ensuring creators’ rights are respected when AI companies scrape and repurpose creative works without permission.

So what’s the takeaway?
AI has its uses but isn’t a replacement for the complexity and emotional nuance of human creativity. For writers, the shift is towards advocating for their visibility and values. For readers, it’s an invitation to choose stories that feel alive, because they are. And for the industry, it’s a chance to build smarter systems that respect creators.

💰 Money Monday: Festive food costs have been creeping up, but there are some clear ways people are keeping Christmas dinner spending under control.

• The bigger story: This piece points to a few practical approaches – supermarkets are heavily discounting festive staples, with budget retailers offering full Christmas dinners for under £12, and roughly a third of seasonal items currently on promotion. Lots of shoppers are also leaning more on own-label products and comparing prices across stores, rather than buying everything in one place.

🐻‍❄️ Polar bears’ “jumping genes” could help them adapt to changing climates and diets, scientists have found. 

🚙 New petrol and diesel vehicles won’t be banned from 2030 if the Conservatives win the next election, Kemi Badenoch has promised.

🤳 Tourists from the UK could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the US, under a new proposal.

👶 The most popular baby names of 2025 have been revealed – can you guess which took the top spot?

🍓 Strawberries are ripening in West Sussex this winter with the help of innovative greenhouses.

🔗 Last week’s most clicked: The latest career trend, Golden Globes nominations and the product tackling hard water.

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Trivia answer: C) Dakota Johnson made an appearance as the mistress in Lily Allen‘s song “Madeline”.

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