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International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
Glory Moralidad

'Modern Poisoning Tools': AI Firms Buying and Destroying Thousands of Books To Feed AI Models

AI companies are buying and destroying printed books to train models, raising concerns over copyright, rare books and the future of literary preservation. (Credit: Left, Matheus Bertelli/Pexels; Right, Ron Lach/Pexels)

Artificial intelligence companies are quietly fuelling a new market for printed books, but many of those volumes never reach readers. Instead, they are being dismantled, scanned and discarded, raising fresh concerns about copyright, cultural preservation and the growing appetite for high-quality data.

What makes the practice especially striking is that many of the books being targeted are older, out-of-print or difficult to replace.

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