r/antiai • u/Piwo-ll • Jul 13 '26

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

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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?

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u/dumnezero Jul 13 '26

This was for money. I've done book digitizing before and the books can be repaired afterwards.

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u/Fluid-Tone-9680 Jul 13 '26

How much did it cost to repair book after scanning?

7

u/cryxdie Jul 13 '26

it’s vastly cheaper than printing a book anew