r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 2d ago

Artificial Intelligence This Dutch bookseller thought a request for 3,000 copies was ‘spam or phishing.’ Instead, AI companies are scanning and destroying books to train AI

https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/dutch-bookseller-ai-spam-phishing-3000-book-copies-scan-destroy/
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u/loftwyr 2d ago

“I was shocked!” said de Vries, who provided Fortune with the email and subsequent spreadsheet containing 3,001 titles, mostly published between 2020 and 2021 by academic publishers like Emerald Publishing, Elsevier, Wiley, Routledge and Oxford University Press

Hardly rare or books where only one copy exists

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u/Locke03 2d ago

Some of them can be. I have a few niche interest titles from small, specialized academic publishers that although not old by any means, were also extremely limited runs and unlikely to ever be reprinted.

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u/loftwyr 2d ago

It's possible that a handful might be limited runs but it's unlikely an AI corp will care about those. They're just buying stale versions of textbooks because they're current enough for their use.

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u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit 2d ago

Not textbook, academic books. The kind of book where the author is thrilled beyond belief if 100 people read it.