AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
www.404media.co
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
  • minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
    10·
    17 days ago

    And destroying? So once they have the data in their control, destroy competing access? Capitalism will be the end of us.

    • B0rax@feddit.org
      12·
      17 days ago

      They are destroying it for 2 reasons:

      • copyright. They claim that they now have the book contents digitized and therefore are not allowed to redistribute the books (because that would equate to copying in their minds)
      • a destructive scanning process is mich easier and cheaper (just chop off the spine of a book and feed page by page through a scanner compared to mechanically turning pages)