AI companies are shredding rare books

# Summary AI companies are purchasing rare books, scanning them with machines that destroy the spines, and shredding the originals to use as training data, with a service called ISBNdb facilitating these transactions while keeping buyers anonymous. A federal judge ruled the practice constitutes fair use, and companies like Anthropic are actively acquiring books published before 2022 (which lack AI-generated text) while using NDAs and euphemistic language like "digital preservation" to obscure the irreversible destruction of irreplaceable historical texts.