this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

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[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fair use loophole, they claim they convert one physical book into one digital with no illicit copies, while also supporting the delusion of AI being an equivalent to a human reader. It is weird on so many levels but no one of noticeable weight asked them wtf.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

That is not required by law. It is just easier to cut the bindings off. The other way is slow: https://archive.org/details/eliza-digitizing-book_202107