Rare-Book Sellers Suspect AI Firms Are Buying Books and Destroying Them

AI companies are reportedly buying old books and destroying them after scanning the pages, using the method as the fastest and cheapest way to gather high-quality long-form text for training models. Book dealers fear the practice is occurring on a far larger scale than has been reported, putting rare physical copies at risk of being lost forever. The destruction is especially frustrating because it is avoidable.