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Advocacy Groups Urge FTC to Investigate Anticompetitive Book Destruction by AI Companies

More than a dozen public interest and consumer advocacy groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the 'hoard-and-destroy' practices of leading artificial intelligence developers. These companies are reportedly buying physical books in bulk, digitizing the content to train large language models, and then physically destroying the original copies. This practice is particularly notable for rare and antique books, which may be the last surviving copies of certain works. Critics argue that this destruction of non-renewable resources creates an anticompetitive environment, potentially favoring wealthy incumbents like Amazon and Anthropic. By destroying the originals, these companies may deny start-ups and the general public access to essential source material. The groups highlight that AI firms prefer older books because they are guaranteed to be human-authored and free from the AI-generated text that currently pollutes the internet. While the practice is legally permissible under the First-Sale Doctrine, advocacy groups seek to determine the scale of the destruction and how many of the destroyed books are the last remaining copies of a given work.

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