Secondhand Booksellers Suspect AI Firms Behind Unusual Bulk Orders

Independent secondhand booksellers in the UK, Ireland, US, and Australia are reporting a surge in mysterious bulk orders of random books. Sellers such as Stuart Manley of Barter Books and Jim Shaughnessy of MW Books describe these purchases as lacking a clear theme, ranging from obscure Latin texts and 18th century African agricultural implements to cowboy novels and racing car biographies. Some sellers note that buyers are paying full price and using opaque aliases, with some deliveries routed to freight warehouses near Heathrow airport.

Speculation among booksellers is that these books are being acquired by artificial intelligence companies to train large language models. This theory is supported by reports that the AI firm Anthropic used a process called Project Panama to acquire books, remove their spines for industrial scale scanning, and recycle the remains. A spokesperson for Anthropic stated that sourcing books is a common industry practice and denied that the company buys and destroys rare or antiquarian books.

Legal and ethical concerns surround these practices. In the US, a judge ruled in 2025 that using books purchased in this manner to train AI was not a copyright violation, describing the use as exceedingly transformative. However, an intellectual property specialist from Oxford University noted that UK law differs, as copying for training libraries generally requires the permission of the copyright owner. While some booksellers appreciate the sales of long unsold titles, others express sadness over the potential destruction of the physical books.