AI Companies Suspected of Buying Rare Books to Destroy Them for Training Data

Booksellers suspect that AI firms are purchasing rare and old books and then destroying them to train AI models. The process involves tearing out pages, scanning them quickly, and discarding the volumes, which is reportedly the cheapest and fastest method.

Book lovers fear the practice may be occurring on a larger scale than reported, risking the permanent loss of physical copies. The article emphasizes that this destruction is unnecessary.