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

A Dutch bookseller dismissed a request for 3,000 academic books as spam, later discovering AI companies were scanning and destroying books to train models. The books, from publishers like Elsevier and Oxford University Press, were part of a trend where AI firms use destructive scanning to create digital libraries for training.