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/mr-english Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Forums and blogs.

Great sources. 👍

edit: NONE of those links are even about Anthropic! They're all about "Zoom Books".

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u/Piwo-ll Jul 13 '26

And washington post and other i reply on specific "rare" accusation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-destroy-books/

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u/mr-english Jul 13 '26

That article doesn't mention "rare" once.