As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna’s Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.
As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna’s Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.
There are plenty of books out there that don’t have many copies.
If you can purchase a book at a bookstore, then it can be assumed there are sufficient copies in production. They aren’t buying rare books here.
That’s exactly what I’ve heard they’re doing.
So there have been a bunch of articles about this lately. They play loose with descriptions in their titles. Here is one example: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books
“Antique books”. One, notice they don’t mention any actual title or ISBN? Two, these are bought through a book reseller (like Book Depot or ThriftBooks), meaning that “antique” just means “used”.
In my personal library collection I have new books, I have used books, and I have rare books. These are not the same thing.
That seems like a leap that requires more evidence.