Recent reports said that AI companies are purchasing large quantities of scarce books, using high-speed scanning equipment that cuts off the spines to digitize them, and then shredding and destroying the paper originals.
Note: Non-destructive scanning typically uses overhead scanners, flatbed scanners, or V-shaped scanning equipment to digitize books without disassembling them. Destructive scanning, by contrast, directly takes books apart and feeds each page into high-speed industrial scanners for processing. Because destructive scanning is more efficient and less expensive, AI companies generally choose this method, ultimately resulting in the destruction of millions of physical books.
Following the controversy over “AI giants destroying books,” some internet users discovered that certain publishers had already labeled their book content as not for use in AI training.
According to Hongxing Capital Bureau, on August 4, a person in charge at Huaxia Publishing House said that if book content is used for artificial intelligence training without authorization, it is difficult to defend their rights, but the publisher will still add a notice: “There must be an attitude and a statement like this; it may make everyone realize that books are protected by copyright.”
The person in charge also said that the publisher had discussed issues related to artificial intelligence and large models internally. Most people believed that it would be better to include this statement in books, and many of the publisher’s books that are not imported titles now carry this notice as well.