Sacrificing Our Books for AI
To feed Claude’s appetite, rare books were bought, destroyed, and digitised
Innovation has been taking the world by surprise every few years. The Internet, smartphones, efficient apps and home appliances made our lives better, and humans were more than happy to welcome it. When it came to any product, service, and especially scientific and technological discovery - there were trial and error tests to understand the effects, the usage, the damage, and other issues.
Then came AI (artificial intelligence), its sudden exposure took the world by storm. This software did not initially come with a manual on how to use it and how it can be misused in the wrong hands. From terrible deeds such as producing fake compromising images (mostly to harass women) to data centres growing like mushrooms (making water undrinkable & the environment unlivable in those areas), to helping in useful tasks like research, data analysis and having all information at our finger tips - AI has received major questionable reviews.
“Project Panama” is one of the AI company Anthropic’s plans to improve its large language model Claude which needed a massive pool of language combinations to improve its ability to predict language outcomes. So instead of securing copyrights permission to think like authors, Anthropic decided to use pirated books and free copies which resulted in a $1.5bn settlement out of court (announced in late August and early September 2025, while the court granted its final judicial approval on July 20, 2026)
What happened in between was ‘destructive scanning’, where Anthropic has been buying, hoarding and feeding books to Claude to learn and mimic a vast pool of knowledge. Rare books, collector’s items, vintage first and second edition books - are “stripped from their bindings, cut their pages to size, and scanned into digital form – discarding the paper originals”.
Every book lover was devastated by the sight and news of this cruel act.
Feeding AI comes with a cost
“Since childhood we have been taught to respect a book, and to see such a hyper masculine destructive action was deeply disturbing.” says Shahana Siddiqui, PhD, Medical Anthropologist at University of Amsterdam. “The benefit of reading a book, to touch and hold it adds value to our tactile skills. What this book genocide is doing is limiting our knowledge like dictators and colonizers did in the past and forcing us to turn to AI while diminishing our critical thinking. It feels like all the sci-fi dystopian stories that we read as warnings, are currently being carried out in reality. ”
Since childhood we have been taught to respect a book, and to see such a hyper masculine destructive action was deeply disturbing.
It appears that Anthropic aims to feed information to AI that are solely human written texts and the best option they thought of is books. Their method is damaging with zero respect to the literature that has been preserved for ages and passed down through generations.
Farah Ghuznavi, author of Fragments of Riversong and editor of the Lifelines anthology shares, “Many old and out-of-print books have been cannibalised like this, some of which are irreplaceable. As readers and writers, we need to raise awareness of this process through social media as well as all other means available to us - from meaningful conversations to opportunities for activism - and to lobby hard for international and national laws to prevent more such unethical actions in the years ahead.”
Many old and out-of-print books have been cannibalised like this, some of which are irreplaceable.
The rise of e-books and free downloadable copies has been inevitable. Hard and soft copy books co-existed peacefully for a long time. Even if libraries and bookstores have seen a decline in footfall over the decade, there was not any appalling act carried out this way against books before.
“While we use AI tools to fast track work in our daily lives, just like ebooks, AI tools are ushering in an age for readers which although helpful for quick research work, has more adverse effects than benefits.” says Redwan Islam Orittro, a marketeer and an avid reader.
“However, in an age where we are going digital, with even corporations claiming to go “green” by discontinuing using paper, this was inevitable. Maybe a century down the line we will only have physical copies of books in specialized libraries, museums and archives. While this is heart-breaking for a romantic bibliophile like me, I have to sadly accept the fact that probably we are powerless to do anything about this.”
While we use AI tools to fast track work in our daily lives, just like ebooks, AI tools are ushering in an age for readers which although helpful for quick research work, has more adverse effects than benefits.
What is the solution to this deteriorating situation?
The books need to be protected and the habit of reading needs to be nurtured. There is a V shaped glass scanner by Internet Archive which manually scans books and keeps it intact without having to rip it off from the spine. However getting these companies to use it is another dilemma. The next generation is already dependent on gadgets since birth, even schools have shifted to tabs and computers. The art of writing with hands, critical thinking, analyzing excerpts and the author's point of view is becoming a fading activity.
“The screening needs to be stricter as to where these rare and vintage copies are going. I was reading in an article that plenty of vintage bookstores got bulk orders which was unusual. When all these articles about Anthropic came out, the booksellers and libraries kind of connected the dots. So until these AI companies are required to follow the policies to properly use and respect these books, there will be instances like this. The book sellers and libraries need a proper screening method to identify where these books are going. Even when companies are buying them off under false individual accounts, there has to be a way to keep track of these books.” Doctor Nazia Shefa, a voracious reader, shares her thoughts.
AI has changed the world irreversibly. From trying to solve climate change issues, AI data centres are actively depleting natural resources. It has been disrupting the job market and with access to mass information, it is fundamentally ending unstructured time and refusing to let our minds be bored when most of our brain does the critical thinking. People are finding the balance with book clubs, spending time offline and bringing back activities from the 80s and 90s. There is some hope to preserve the age-old habit of reading, growing a collection of books and preserving history.