‘More than just objects’: Australian book sellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI
TL;DR
Secondhand booksellers in Australia suspect their stock has ended up in the AI supply chain, where old books are bought, scanned, and then destroyed. For dealers like Melbourne's Tim White, the book as a physical object matters as much as its contents, from inscriptions to bindings. Ahead of the Melbourne Rare Book Fair, the trade is worried that rare titles are disappearing for good just to supply training data, and wants clarity on who is buying the books and what happens to them next.
Nauti's Take
Digitising old collections is a genuine opportunity: knowledge that survives in only a handful of copies becomes searchable and outlives crumbling paper. The catch is the destruction after scanning, since a scan carries neither the provenance nor the materiality of a unique object.
Libraries and dealers should push for contracts that require the books back, while publishers and AI firms benefit from cleanly licensed collections.
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