AI companies are bulk-buying second-hand books to destroy and scan for training data
AI firms including Anthropic are purchasing tens of thousands of second-hand books worldwide, destructively scanning them to train language models, raising copyright and preservation concerns.
Second-hand booksellers across multiple countries, including New Zealand, have reported unusual large bulk orders of specific titles. The purchases are linked to AI companies' efforts to acquire physical books for destructive scanning—slicing off spines and scanning pages to feed into language models. The practice appears to exploit a US legal loophole: fair-use doctrine and first-sale laws allow AI companies to buy and process physical books without copyright holder permission, though Anthropic recently settled a copyright case for $1.5 billion. Legal experts say the practice would likely not be permitted under New Zealand's narrower fair-dealing laws.
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