BBC Technology · Technology
Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?
Booksellers are reporting mysterious bulk orders. It's thought the books are being used to train AI - and ending up pulped. Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?
Why it matters. The AI industry's demand for physical books to train language models is disrupting the secondhand book market and raising ethical questions about the mass destruction of literature.
- Booksellers are experiencing mysterious bulk orders of secondhand books.
- The books are believed to be used as training data for artificial intelligence models.
- Many of these purchased books are ultimately destroyed and pulped after being digitized.
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