Independent bookstores in Europe receive suspicious orders for thousands of books, prompting fears they'll be destroyed to train AI — sellers believe acquisitions are part of AI tech companies’ push to get more data
TL;DR
Independent bookstores across Europe report online orders for thousands of copies of obscure titles that have seen almost no demand for years. Sellers suspect AI companies are sourcing bulk text to train language models and may accept the books being destroyed afterwards. The suspicion rests on a single source and is not independently confirmed. For the book trade the case raises questions about the origin, purpose and legal basis of such data purchases.
Nauti's Take
The suspicion has a useful core: when training data gets bought physically, a documentable licensing chain replaces anonymous scraping for once. The weakness is the evidence, since the claim rests on a single source and has not been confirmed.
Teams building AI workflows on books or publisher content should document the licensing chain, usage rights and provenance first, then verify unusual bulk buyers and their stated purpose.
Sources