$219 Springer Nature book "Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced" was written with a chatbot

In my experience the publisher Manning Books earns their cut. They’ve done interesting books, allow early access and update books online, provide digital copies if you buy the physical, etc.

Isn't that illegal?

The content (i.e. text, tables, images, etc. ) of the book is under copyleft, while the only thing the publisher can argue that's theirs is the design (cover, font, copyright claim text, etc.) There are things like page layout and stuff that may've been created by the author or the publishers so it's in a grey area.

All in all, I think scanning the book and OCRing it, removing stuff like page numbers and those first few pages of junk would remove all "infringing" elements.

Or, as always, you can email tye author and they're 99% sure to give you their manuscript directly if they didn't publish it somewhere else already.