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AI companies buy and destroy physical books to create training data
A federal judge ruled that destructive scanning of legally purchased books can qualify as fair use, even as separate copyright litigation continues.
AI developers are reportedly acquiring physical books in bulk, scanning them into AI training datasets, and then destroying the originals. According to Decrypt, the activity is carried out at industrial scale through intermediaries that purchase books anonymously on behalf of AI clients.
Booksellers say demand has surged, including for obscure and out-of-print titles. Decrypt reports that one unnamed bookseller told 404 Media that weekly sales rose from about 20 books to several hundred after AI buyers entered the market, even as the bookseller expressed concern that uncommon books are being permanently lost after scanning and pulping.
The practice has been compared to Anthropic’s “Project Panama,” which digitized millions of books using destructive scanning. Decrypt also notes that a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in Bartz v. Anthropic PBC that scanning legally purchased physical books into digital copies, even when the originals are destroyed, can be considered transformative fair use, though separate copyright litigation remains ongoing.