Tell the FTC: Stop Big AI From Hoarding and Destroying Books

Public-interest groups just demanded the Federal Trade Commission investigate a disturbing Big AI practice: buying physical books, cutting them apart, scanning them for AI training data, and throwing the originals away.

Anthropic reportedly acquired millions of print books to build a private training library. Internal materials described a system for destructively scanning them at scale. Amazon has reportedly used destructive scanning, too.

This isn’t about banning ideas. It’s about powerful tech companies turning books — including potentially rare and hard-to-replace works — into disposable raw material for proprietary AI databases.

Tell the Federal Trade Commission: Investigate Big AI’s practice of buying, scanning, and destroying books — and stop companies from using it to lock up knowledge and crush competition.

Public-interest advocates are warning that giant AI companies can buy books at a scale smaller competitors cannot match, destroy the physical copies after digitizing them, and keep the resulting data for themselves.

That gives the biggest companies another way to cement their dominance.

Books preserve history, research, culture, and human creativity. They are not just feedstock for billion-dollar AI systems. And once a scarce or out-of-print book is destroyed, the public may never get that copy back.

The FTC has the power to investigate whether this “hoard and destroy” model unfairly restricts competition. It should find out how widespread the practice is, whether scarce books are being targeted, and whether dominant AI companies are using private book collections to shut rivals out.

Big Tech should not be allowed to buy up knowledge, destroy the originals, and turn the remains into another private monopoly.

Add your name and tell the FTC: Investigate Big AI’s destructive book-buying practices and take action against companies using them to undermine competition or public access.

The petition to the Federal Trade Commission reads:

“Investigate AI companies that buy, scan, and destroy books to build proprietary training databases, and take enforcement action against any practices that unfairly restrict competition or public access.”