Anthropic Reportedly Destroying Books for AI Training Data
Anthropic has reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars purchasing books published before 2022, cutting them apart, scanning them, and discarding the physical copies—potentially including rare editions—to obtain training data free from AI-generated content. Elon Musk stated he asked xAI to preserve and digitize such books without destruction. The practice raises questions about the trade-off between AI training needs and preservation of physical media.