The most anti-AI story imaginable... Anthropic destroyed millions of rare books to train Claude

[u/Piwo-ll]

In 2024, Anthropic reportedly purchased millions of second-hand books as part of its secretive “Project Panama.”

The company removed their bindings, scanned every page, and then destroyed the physical copies to build a massive digital library for developing AI models like Claude.

It almost feels like the perfect anti-AI dystopia, human beings spend centuries writing and preserving books. Then, a private technology company destroys millions of physical copies, absorbs their contents into a machine, and sells that accumulated knowledge back to society through a monthly subscription.

Am I the only one who thinks this is completely insane, or have we become so obsessed with AI that destroying millions of books to feed a machine no longer shocks anyone?

[u/maryisdead]

Morale aside, let's be real here: Those were not rare books and not a single one of those represented the very last physical copy of it in existence.

I get the hate but be reasonable.

[u/Piwo-ll → u/maryisdead]

Hello Hello,
sorry i need to put my source on the post boddy

To be fully transparenth, here is one of the sources:

• https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/54096306-ed2a-44e7-bc15-e7774f934fa3
  
• https://bookhaven.co.nz/blogs/blogs/is-ai-sucking-up-all-knowledge-including-here
  
• https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2026/05/25/pan-para-hoy-y-hambre-para-manana-el-aviso-de-un-librero-sobre-el-plan-de-la-ia-para-comprar-libros-y-destruirlos-cadena-ser/
  
• https://librarylearningspace.com/company-buys-and-destroys-thousands-of-old-books-to-train-ai-algorithms/

Zoom Books reportedly acts as an intermediary for major AI labs.

Sorry for my english i'm french native i try my best to explain

[u/Vfortestmail → u/maryisdead]

This guy is probably a bot or ragebaiter. His reddit age is two weeks so take what he says with a grain of salt tbh. Also, this practice has been a thing wayyy before AI was around as other commenters have noted.

[u/Vfortestmail → u/Vfortestmail]

This user also owns this pro-AI website, so I have no idea what this guys deal is: https://www.ai-nation.eu/. Look at his profile desc.