AI companies accused of hoarding and destroying millions of books
August 21, 2026 / 3:12 PM EDT / CBS News
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.