AI companies are buying these books and training their large language models, sometimes destroying books in the process. It’s the only way for them to do it, she says.

“They’re not recycling, they’re devouring them, they’re destroying them. One of the quotes from the Anthropic court case was, Project Panama - so this is from the company, from Anthropic - Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.”

When she realised what was happening, she cancelled all the orders, she says.

“We cancelled, and we got another lot, a flurry of orders last week, so we cancelled them as well. These are huge orders. There was 10 orders in one day for 180 books, going to another company.”

This bookstore may deserve your business.