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.”

  • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    5 hours ago

    “I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” one small bookseller told tech news website 404 Media last week.

    The bookseller explained that in April, he suddenly went from selling around 20 books per week to hundreds — including obscure and out-of-print works.

    “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell,” he said. “I’ve been well suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books. On the other hand, I don’t like the end-use, and I don’t like that uncommon books are being pulped.”

    Then stop selling rare and out of print books to an AI company, you fucking doorknob.

    Greed knows no bounds.