A post claims AI companies scan rare books for training and then pulp the originals

heyshrutimishra · x · 2026-07-29

The post amplifies a claim that AI companies are buying used and rare books, scanning them for training, and then pulping the originals.

The quoted text frames this as a loss of physical knowledge: books are digitized, then destroyed, leaving the contents only inside training data.
The author’s reaction (“WTF”) underscores the cultural and ethical alarm rather than adding new facts.
There is no company named in the post, but the underlying issue is the broader controversy around how AI training datasets are sourced, preserved, and whether physical originals should be discarded after digitization.

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