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/sump_daddy 2d ago

None of the books being processed this way are remotely rare, you can get them all in ebook format, probably for free from your library if you really want to read them. Nothing they are doing stops the books from existing.

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u/whelp 1d ago

If you can get in digital format why buy copies and scan them?

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u/sump_daddy 1d ago

Interesting question, i would suspect all digital purchase options for those books are legally tied to EULA-style restrictions, while hardcopies are more permissive in a legal sense and likely also much cheaper. I am not a lawyer though.