Anthropic's "Book Burning AI" Scandal Sparks Controversy Again: Musk Promises to Preserve Original Book, Sacks Lambasts Double Standard

According to Scout Beating monitoring, 404 Media recently discovered that ISBNdb is currently bulk purchasing old books on behalf of an AI company, with a single transaction amounting to millions of copies, all while using a confidentiality agreement to conceal the buyer's identity. The report did not explicitly name Anthropic, but its previous "buying, ripping, scanning, recycling" Panama project was quickly linked to the recent findings.

Anthropic had previously purchased millions of physical books, cut off the spines for rapid scanning, and then sent the original books for recycling. Internal documents also revealed that the company did not want the outside world to know about this initiative.

What has been most contentious is the possibility that rare and out-of-print books could also be fed into this assembly line. While ordinary books can be reprinted, once a rare edition with very few copies in existence is destroyed, it can never be replaced. Previously, the court ruled that scanning legally acquired books for the purpose of destruction of the originals could be considered fair use, but legality does not mean absence of opposition.

Subsequently, Musk stated that he had instructed SpaceXAI to preserve rare books and to switch to a non-destructive scanning method.

David Sacks, White House AI and Crypto Affairs Advisor, then criticized Anthropic for its double standards: while advocating for free usage of global works to train models, it was simultaneously charging competitors to acquire Claude's output for training, labeling it as intellectual property theft.