AI companies opt for the destructive route... The result is the destruction of millions of books.

2026-07-29 22:57 UTC

During the Anthropic lawsuit, Tom Harvey, who previously participated in the creation of Google Books before leading Anthropic’s “Project Panama” digitalization project, confirmed that the AI firm hired several document scanning companies. Datamation Information Services, which offers high-volume, non-destructive, and destructive book scanning services, was one of them. The former method employs different tools, like overhead scanners, flatbed scanners, or V-shaped imaging systems. The latter method, on the other hand, would have personnel gut the books and feed the individual pages into a high-speed industrial scanner. Logically, AI companies opt for the destructive route since it is more efficient and lower-cost. The result is the destruction of millions of books. Obviously, printed books represent a treasure trove of information for AI. However, many debate the ethics of removing books from circulation since it is uncertain whether AI companies filter the rare or even out-of-print books from the common titles during digitalization. The other major issue is that scanned books go directly into a private database to train AI, which the general public does not have access to. True, we will have smarter AI, but at the cost of the information not being available to future generations. Source [web-archived; 2026-07-28_18-53-43Z] Related: AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books… (…documents about its plan to scan millions of books… to destroy the books in the process…) [web-archived; 2026-07-21_14-58-43_Z]

Replies (4)

@Hamartia@lemmy.world 2026-07-30 03:06

From an archival point of view, nothing that they’re destroying doesn’t exist in numerous libraries. Yes, destroying rare books isn’t good but archives the world over will hold copies of these tomes. If this was an actual concern archivists the world over would be shouting about it. In my experience they are rabid protectors of our material heritage. In reality they see digitisation as a significant part of the preservation of that heritage. As an example: paper production went through a crisis 1800 - 1850; it used to be made from discarded cotton cloth (and was of high quality); but by 1800 not enough old cloth could be sourced to satisfy demand; so they started to make paper from pulped wood; which was very bad as it contained lignin which is acidic; but it took years to figure this out; in western archives are lots of books and newspapers turning into confetti from that period; we can save some material from that period by washing out the acidity and lining the pages with very thin, very strong Japanese tissue; it just isn’t economically viable to save all extant copies of some mass produced book/newspaper; better to preserve some select holdings in special repository libraries and digitise it for posterity. There are way more important issues to get riled around the arseholes developing AI and the data centres they demand. This is just rage baiting.

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@4am@lemmy.zip 2026-07-30 03:33

Just like tech: if you can’t get it anywhere else, you’ll have to rent it from them forever

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@fubarx@lemmy.world 2026-07-30 03:45

If it’s any consolation, AI training on printed words (or music, art, or video) is just as useful as tasting a stew so you can learn farming.

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@from_D4rkness@lemmy.world 2026-07-29 23:11

This will be seen as the new “burning of the library of alexandria” event, if it will even be remembered.

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