this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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385
AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 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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[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The use of the word "rare" implies that they are not bought in bulk....

[–] BassetHound@sh.itjust.works -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Rare doesn’t necessarily mean culturally valuable. How many of these rare books are actually just old instruction manuals, travel guides, training materials, phone books, and dictionaries?

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

The issue with that is that we don't yet know what is culturally valuable or not.

Just because we don't see a need for the specific book now, doesn't mean it won't change tomorrow.