Booksellers suspect AI firms are buying and then destroying rare books
If you can truly appreciate an old book—and maybe even marvel at how its fragile, yellowing pages contain some of the earliest ways that people tried to make sense of the world around them—then headlines about tech companies that are destroying books to train AI likely torture a tender part of your soul. It’s indeed depressing to imagine piles of book spines waiting to be fed into wood chippers while torn-out pages are cropped, scanned, and trashed. But that’s the cheapest and easiest way to sca
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AI firms are suspected of buying rare books in bulk and destroying them to train artificial intelligence models, a practice that concerns booksellers and book preservationists. The concern intensified after a lawsuit revealed that at least one major AI company destroyed millions of print books for training purposes. Non-destructive scanning methods exist, such as the technology patented over a decade ago and the careful hand-scanning process used by preservation organizations, but AI firms may favor faster and cheaper destructive methods to quickly process large volumes of text. Booksellers are now flagging suspicious bulk orders and some are refusing to sell to potential AI firms in an effort to protect rare books that cannot be replaced.
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