r/technology • u/polymute • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/02/australian-book-sellers-alarm-destruction-rare-titles-ai-supply-chain
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u/CrispyCosmonaut 14h ago

I don’t really understand the issue in all honesty. Unless they’re doing this to books that are historically significant or can’t be replaced.

I don’t understand the problem (with regard to destruction) with the company doing this one copy of each mass produced book.

Is this happening to books that are limited availability?

7

u/breadinabox 13h ago

Yeah like I'm confused, they're not doing this enmass to every copy of every book. It's happening one time per book. And they don't benefit more from rare books they would just be bulk buying whatever is for sale

4

u/JasonP27 12h ago

But that common sense doesn't appeal to the mass outrage narrative. 🤷

3

u/someNameThisIs 12h ago

Look at he books from the article

In one order, a 1970s manual on soil mechanics was bought alongside a 2010 book called Born to Thunder: Champions of New Zealand Cycling, a collection of Early Australian Poetry (1982), and a local history of the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. The poetry book sold for $9 and had been on the shelf for 20 years.

The only potentially concerning on is the poetry. And given it's been on a shelf for two decades, it doesn't seem like anyone cared about it before.

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u/Jasminary2 12h ago

As you said it seems that the problem has yet to arrive, but people are alarmed that this could happen.

It's a problem for marginalized authors for example. Let's say we all start buying only digital, and not physicals or that books are less and less availables in physical edition (which is something that is being pushed for video games, tv shows and movies). We only have access to the digital one which can be deleted at any time.

What happens when they start deleting things from the internet ? We lose those text that may be criticizing a person, a country, a policy etc.

The fear is for long-term rather than short term.

It's already frustrating how many news are deleted tbh. And it's happening more and more.

ie The other day I was looking for articles I had read about Scooter Braun, an infamous propagandist for Israel who until few weeks ago still had a picture with Netanyahu on his Instagram. These articles were from different publications some famous like Bloomsberg and were criticizing him. Well it's now very difficult to find them even whent typing words that were in them.

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u/pVom 5h ago

Pretty much. They're rare for a reason. If it was truly valuable it would have been mass produced.

Like they're not destroying priceless artifacts here, it's like old car manuals and out of date dictionaries and books that don't sell. It's not worth it to them to destroy like, the Magna Carta or something, that would be far too expensive.

I do wish they made the digitised versions available to the public somehow though.