AI companies, including major corporations Meta and Anthropic, are acquiring rare and old books in mass in order to scan and destroy them. In June 2025, it was ruled that using copyrighted books in order to train AI models is covered by fair use under transformative measures. However, the ruling also stated that obtaining and storing unauthorized books in a central database is not covered by fair use and is subject to copyright infringement laws. These companies are claiming it's okay under "Fair Use" and that it's with the intent of preserving human culture and history. If that were true, they would not be demolishing the originals but rather have them held in special conditions to maintain their integrity. The amount of lying, theft, and destruction is excruciatingly unethical.

The scariest part if it all is that an internal planning document states "Our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world... We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”