Secondhand booksellers in UK and Ireland suspect AI firms behind ‘strange’ bulk orders
Summary
Secondhand booksellers in the UK, Ireland, and other countries have noticed unusual large orders of random books from mysterious buyers. Sellers and experts think these books may be collected by AI companies to scan and use their content to train artificial intelligence systems.Key Facts
- Secondhand bookshops in the UK and Ireland have received many bulk orders of books with no clear theme.
- Similar unusual orders have been reported in the US, Australia, and Europe.
- The orders include a wide mix of books, such as a rare translation, old magazines, and niche topics.
- Buyers often use different names but have shipments sent to the same warehouses near Heathrow airport.
- One bookseller reported selling about 6,000 books in these types of orders, worth thousands of pounds.
- The orders do not follow typical buying patterns seen in the secondhand book market.
- Sellers suspect AI companies buy these books to scan their contents for training AI models.
- A known AI firm, Anthropic, has spent large amounts buying books to scan and recycle them after using the content to train their AI chatbot named Claude.
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