AI Giants Are Destroying Rare Books to Fuel Their Models: How Antiquities Are Becoming Part of Tech Supply Chains

AI companies are bulk-purchasing rare and antique books, scanning their pages, then destroying the originals to train language models. This practice has sparked outrage from authors, archivists, and historians, who call it 'evil incarnate.' 404 Media's AirTag tracking revealed books were shipped from California to Amazon's 'VGT3' warehouse, where they were systematically destroyed. The facility's entrance features a logo of a T-Rex devouring an open book. AI firms are turning to physical books to avoid legal risks and data quality issues with digital sources. Documents from a lawsuit against Anthropic showed the company planned to scan between 500,000 to 2 million books. While legal under the First-Sale Doctrine, critics argue it undermines creators' rights.

This book destruction wave could redefine the creative economy. TSMC and ASML's supply chains may benefit from this efficiency trend, but semiconductor stocks like Nvidia and AMD could face headwinds amid the geopolitical tensions over rare earth elements.