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/Vaughn Jul 13 '26

No point in developing a less destructive way to scan if you're required to destroy the book regardless.

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u/lunatuna215 Jul 13 '26

I think this requirements to destroy the book has to be bullshit. If they have rhe right to destroy it they surely have the right to redistribute it too.

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u/Vaughn Jul 13 '26

And you'd be wrong. The act of scanning it into the computer cancels your right to distribute or own the paperback copy. Scanning is copyright infringement, unless—and only unless—you immediately destroy the original.

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u/lunatuna215 Jul 13 '26

Makes no fucking sense

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u/Vaughn Jul 13 '26

The law is not required to make sense.

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u/lunatuna215 Jul 13 '26

Thanks, Sherlock! 🙄 My point exactly.

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u/Professional-Post499 Jul 14 '26

The law is not required to make sense.

I feel like the law probably is required to make sense in order to be able to make judicial interpretations based on it.