AI companies accused of hoarding and destroying millions of books

TL;DR

Public interest and consumer advocacy groups are calling for an FTC investigation into AI developers.
The AI companies are accused of buying books in bulk, digitizing them for AI training, and then destroying the physical copies.
Critics label this practice 'hoard-and-destroy' and argue it is anticompetitive and limits access to essential source material.
The groups fear this practice could lead to a future where only the wealthiest companies control AI models and humanity's written works.
The FTC is asked to assess the scope of the practice and the number of unique books destroyed.
A previous lawsuit against Anthropic regarding the use of scanned books for AI training resulted in a ruling that it did not violate copyright law.
A recent report indicates Amazon is also engaged in buying, scanning, and destroying books for AI training.

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