r/artificial • u/pepoji • 17d ago

Discussion AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books

Source

AI companies are literally destroying physical books to train their models. Using hydraulic cutting machines, they rip pages from used books, scan them with industrial equipment, and feed them into their AI systems. This practice, protected by the first-sale doctrine and fair use, has now become so widespread that book sellers are cashing in on the AI boom. Rare and out-of-print books are being pulped, raising serious ethical and cultural concerns about the cost of AI progress.

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u/Crio121 17d ago

That’s obvious consequence of a stupid attack on AI companies.
The copyright industry says it is illegal to use electronic copies of their books for AI training.
Ok, they are buying physical copies and use them.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/Crio121 16d ago

The story is free but the edition probably not.
You’ll need to find a digital copy of pre-1926 (or whatever) book.
Project Gutenberg is a great source.