AI firms buy millions of old books for training data, avoiding web 'slop'

By PulseAugur Editorial · [12 sources] · 2026-07-21 13:51

AI companies are acquiring large quantities of older books to use as training data, seeking to avoid the "AI slop" of internet-scraped text that could lead to model collapse. Services like ISBNdb facilitate these bulk purchases, offering a way to source pre-2022 printed materials, which are considered structurally free of AI-generated content. This practice has drawn attention due to lawsuits against companies like Anthropic and Google, which were reportedly scanning and destroying books in the process, raising concerns about copyright and the potential loss of these works from society. AI

IMPACT This trend highlights a potential bottleneck in AI training data and may spur new methods for data curation and copyright management.

RANK_REASON The cluster details a significant industry trend of AI companies sourcing physical books for training data, involving major players and raising legal and ethical questions.

Read on 404 Media →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 12 sources. How we write summaries →

AI firms buy millions of old books for training data, avoiding web 'slop'

How we ranked this

Signal score: 0 / 100; Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket: Significant; The cluster details a significant industry trend of AI companies sourcing physical books for training data, involving major players and raising legal and ethical questions.
Source corroboration: 12 independent sources; Strong cross-source corroboration — multiple independent publishers covered this within the clustering window.
Topics: model release, product; Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance: High; Clearly on-topic for AI-industry coverage.
Story freshness: 56 days old; Aged out of breaking-news scoring windows; ranking reflects the durable signal from the full source set.
Coverage growth since scoring: +4 source(s) since last score; New sources have picked up this story since our last re-score. Score will update on the next scoring pass.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [12]

404 Media TIER_1 English(EN) · Emanuel Maiberg · 2026-07-21 13:51

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
Mastodon — sigmoid.social TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-25 16:42

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale https://www. byteseu.com/2227228/

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale https://www. byteseu.com/2227228/ # AI # ArtificialIntelligence

LINKS byteseu.com/2227228
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-27 19:09

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale AI Companies Are Buying Antique Bo

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale https:// share.google/0YoHrB…

LINKS google.com/share.google
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-26 16:40

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale Sign up to see the future, today C

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Traditionally,… # NewsBeep # News # Artificialintellige…

LINKS newsbeep.com/…/712235
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-26 00:07

# AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale https:// futurism.com/artificial

# AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale https:// futurism.com/artificial-intell igence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books

LINKS futurism.com/…/ai-companies-destroying-ra…
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-23 09:08

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop https://www. 404media.co/ai-companies-are-b uying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-fre

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop https://www. 404media.co/ai-companies-are-b uying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-free-of-ai-slop/ # AI # LLM # Books

LINKS 404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-…
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-21 20:16

📰 AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: As AI companies search for more

📰 AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: As AI companies search for more training data to improve their models, one company is offering old, printed books as an ideal source because they... 📰 S…

LINKS news.slashdot.org/…/ai-companies-are-buyi…
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-21 16:18

AI companies are buying millions of old books to use as training data for their models, avoiding the AI slop that pollutes the modern web. A book database compa

AI companies are buying millions of old books to use as training data for their models, avoiding the AI slop that pollutes the modern web. A book database company says pre-2022 printed books are structurally guaranteed to be free of AI-generated content that could cause model col…

LINKS 404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-…
Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-21 13:51

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop https:// web.brid.gy/r/https://www.404m edia.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-bo

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop https:// web.brid.gy/r/https://www.404m edia.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-free-of-ai-slop/
Mastodon — mastodon.social TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-28 00:37

🤖 AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

🤖 AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain Source AI companies are literally destroying physical books to train their models. Using hydraulic cutting machines, th…
Mastodon — mastodon.social TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] · 2026-07-23 11:14

This is beyond cartoonishly evil: AI companies buy rare books from bookstores, because they're free from slop. Books get fed to the slopmachine, destroying the

This is beyond cartoonishly evil: AI companies buy rare books from bookstores, because they're free from slop. Books get fed to the slopmachine, destroying the books in the process. AI companies don't publish digital books, potentially removing the book from society forever. Soci…

LINKS 404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-…
r/singularity TIER_2 English(EN) · /u/Steap-Edit · 2026-07-26 18:14

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

<table> <tr><td> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1v7birc/ai_companies_are_buying_antique_books_ingesting/"> <img alt="AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almo…

How we ranked this

COVERAGE [12]

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