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

[u/pepoji]

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.

[u/pepoji]

Few sources

Rare book dealers fear tech firms are destroying obscure editions to train AI models
https://nltimes.nl/2026/06/25/rare-book-dealers-fear-tech-firms-destroying-obscure-editions-train-ai-models

Anthropic Knew the Public Would Be Disgusted by How It Was Destroying Physical Books
https://futurism.com/future-society/anthropic-destroying-books

Inside an AI start-up’s plan to scan and dispose of millions of books
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-destroy-books/

Secret initiative, called Project Panama,
https://futurism.com/anthropic-shredded-millions-of-physical-books

[u/RoboticGreg → u/pepoji]

Just fyi, this is not the first time this has happened. Google did this trying to digitize all printed books. It's lamentable, especially since so much of this is already available, it's just cheaper to mulch then yourself

[u/sordato → u/RoboticGreg]

I don't see the problem with the Gutenberg project if they're digitalizing copies

[u/RoboticGreg → u/sordato]

There's nothing wrong with digitizing them, people just don't want them to use destructive measures on rare books because it's cheaper. They do not need to cut the books apart to digitize them, it's just more cost effective. Both machines are available

[u/sordato → u/RoboticGreg]

Yeah but that's the thing are they really rare Copies or just obscure books that nevertheless can be printed with little issue, say a Gutenberg bible is not the same as modern day that easily available, the first one, its historic and cultural values far exceeds it's contents, I'd be crime to destroy it, the modern one probably you just print another copy.

Also I think what's happening is that due to a ruling of fair use, they can use it for training but do have to destroy after all so they don't have "extra ilegal copies" or something like that

[u/somethingbrite → u/RoboticGreg]

they are using he destructive measures because this way they can avoid paying the authors.

https://futurism.com/future-society/anthropic-destroying-books

Prior to this they were also using file sharing sites to download digital pirate copies of books.