Booksellers suspect that AI companies are purchasing rare and old books only to destroy them in the process of training their models. The cheapest and fastest way to scan books at scale is to tear out pages, scan them, and discard the rest, making physical copies a casualty of the AI race.
Book collectors and enthusiasts fear the practice is happening more widely than currently reported, which could mean some volumes are lost forever. The destruction is especially troubling because it is entirely avoidable.
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