AI Firms Suspected of Buying Books for Training Data

AI firms suspected of buying and destroying secondhand books

Secondhand booksellers across Europe and beyond are reporting a surge in large, unexplained orders for old and obscure titles, raising suspicions that artificial intelligence companies are buying physical books for training data. The orders often contain books with no clear connection to one another, from foreign-language novels and academic works to magazines and specialist histories. Sellers say the scale and pattern differ from normal trade.