book destruction

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AI Firms Are Buying Up Old Books, Then Scanning and Destroying Them
2 months ago
- AI companies like Anthropic are buying millions of old books to scan and then destroy them for training large language models.
- Anthropic's Project Panama used hydraulic cutting machines to remove book spines and slice pages for industrial scanning before discarding.
- Internal documents reveal Anthropic wanted to keep the project secret, acknowledging negative public reception.
- A judge approved a $1.5 billion class action payment for pirated works, but physical book scanning was ruled fair use under the first-sale doctrine.
- Booksellers have mixed feelings: benefiting financially from selling unsold inventory but disliking the destruction of uncommon books.
The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions
2 months ago
- AI companies are bulk-buying rare and out-of-print books, cutting the spines, scanning the pages, and disposing of the originals.
- Pre-2022 books are preferred as they are considered free of AI-generated content, with orders of up to one million volumes facilitated anonymously by services like ISBNdb.
- A federal judge ruled that digitizing purchased books and destroying physical copies qualifies as fair use, citing the replacement of print with digital without redistribution.
- Anthropic’s Project Panama aimed to destructively scan all books in the world, using hydraulic cutters and industrial scanners, with physical materials recycled or disposed of.
- Booksellers in multiple countries reported unusual bulk orders for niche titles, not matching typical collector patterns, often from anonymous buyers.
- Destructive scanning is faster and cheaper than non-destructive methods, and the elimination of physical copies ensures only one digital version exists, aiding fair-use arguments.
- AI tools like Character.ai and others can rewrite or alter public domain works, raising concerns about digital modification of original texts and the role of physical books as static references.
- Used-book dealers worry about the loss of rare editions with few surviving copies, while some compare the practice to themes in George Orwell’s '1984' where records are destroyed and rewritten.
- No official government or library guidance has been issued, but readers are increasingly buying physical copies to preserve personal records outside digital systems.
The Devouring of All Knowledge
2 months ago
- AI/LLM companies are buying, scanning, and destroying rare physical books at an unprecedented scale to train their models.
- Physical books published before 2021 are considered the last reliable source of human-written text, as later content may be AI-generated.
- The destruction of rare books raises ethical concerns about hoarding knowledge behind walled gardens, reminiscent of dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.
- Scanned books are kept in private databases, not publicly accessible, risking censorship and loss of impartial access to history.
- Actions to preserve knowledge include buying and holding paper books, which cannot be revoked or monetized, and resisting the subscription-based model.
- The situation is not yet fully dystopian, but it marks a concerning trend of knowledge collection, segregation, and protection by tech companies.

book destruction

AI Firms Are Buying Up Old Books, Then Scanning and Destroying Them

The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions

The Devouring of All Knowledge