AI companies are shredding rare books
twitter.com
July 27, 2026
1 min read
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72/100
Summary
š¦AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one c...
Community Sentiment
Positives
- Scanning and digitizing old books can accelerate historical research, giving historians access to material that was previously hard to find.
- Destructively scanning books could be seen as a practical solution to preserve content digitally, especially for works still under copyright.
Concerns
- Shredding irreplaceable texts for AI training is not just unethical; it raises serious concerns about the future of rare books.
- The practice of AI companies buying and destroying books for cheaper training data reflects a disturbing trend that prioritizes profit over preserving cultural heritage.
- Thereās a growing skepticism that AI companies genuinely care about the value of the material theyāre destroying, treating it merely as a means to an end.
