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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[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It depends on why the books is rare, some books are rare because they are not popular while other because they were banned. For example I know a novel were the English translation is easily available, but the original language is rare because it was banned in the original language in multiple countries. Don't forget collecter artbooks that were never digitised.