this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

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[–] LordFireCrotch@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

I like the plate spinning analogy. I think these guys have SO much money that they do have a few tricks up their sleeve to keep investors going.

I think once they land a few enterprise level fish hard, it will keep the plates spinning a good bit longer.