Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?

What the report says

Independent secondhand booksellers in the UK and elsewhere are reporting a surge in unusual bulk orders, with some shipments apparently headed to distant warehouses. BBC World News says the pattern has prompted suspicion that the books may be destined for artificial intelligence training rather than for ordinary readers.

The report links the trend to recent US legal developments involving the AI company Anthropic. A judge ruled in a copyright case that using lawfully purchased books to train AI could be allowed under US law, and court documents later indicated that books were being destroyed as part of a scanning process. Anthropic said its training data includes publicly available web material, commercial datasets and data it creates itself, and denied that it buys and destroys rare or antiquarian books.

Booksellers told BBC World News that the orders have been strikingly varied, ranging from obscure Latin texts to popular fiction, and that some sales have appeared random. Industry figures said the pattern is unsettling because it could involve rare or historically important editions being bought for digitisation and destruction. The article notes that UK copyright rules differ from those in the US, where copying for AI training may require permission from rights holders.