The destruction of Western cultural heritage?
Book destruction – Several AI tech giants are said to be involved
by the editorial team at freiewelt.net
(4 September 2026) Various AI companies are buying up and destroying millions of books, including historical works from the 18th and 19th centuries. What originally came to light at “Anthropic” is reportedly also the case at various other AI tech giants.
ranks among the world’s most important historic monastic libraries.
(Picture ma)
Authors, historians, book lovers, teachers, students – all people with a sense and appreciation of civilisation and culture – are outraged. Increasing evidence suggests that major AI companies are acquiring physical books in large numbers, digitising them and then destroying the originals. Rare and antiquarian copies are also affected.
In Europe, for months now, an increasing number of booksellers and antiquarian bookshops have been puzzled by large orders from the US and Canada. On online platforms, more and more books are marked as “sold out” or “out of print”.
What has happened?
Court documents from a case against the company Anthropic revealed that millions of books were purchased, their bindings cut open and the pages scanned. The physical copies then ended up in the shredder. This operation was known internally as “Project Panama”.
Subsequent investigations by “404 Media” confirmed this pattern elsewhere too. Using a hidden AirTag, a delivery of nearly a thousand books was tracked to an Amazon warehouse. There, staff spend the whole day scanning books (see the report in Forbes magazine).1
Why are companies turning to physical books?
Digital sources harbour legal risks and often provide substandard data. Many texts on the internet now originate from AI systems themselves. Physical books printed before 2022, on the other hand, offer content written by humans and carefully edited.
Anyone who purchases a copy legally is also permitted, under current US law, to destroy it and use it for their own training. The so-called “first-sale doctrine” allows the buyer to do with their physical copy as they please. Courts have, in some cases, classified digitisation for internal purposes as permissible use.
The laws of other countries do not apply because the books are destroyed in the US
From an international perspective, there is a huge legal loophole that makes it possible to build up large datasets without compensating the authors. It is precisely this legal loophole that is being ruthlessly exploited to scan and destroy millions of books.
The biggest problem is that many books are disappearing which have historical value as sources and documents. This applies particularly to books from the 18th and 19th centuries. These books are then no longer available for purchase by the public or libraries.
How widespread is this?
Exact figures are lacking. Internal documents from Anthropic referred to between hundreds of thousands and two million books in a single (!) contract.
Booksellers report orders ranging from a few hundred to one million copies.
An internal document from Anthropic clearly set out the objective: to destructively scan every book in the world, whilst remaining as inconspicuous as possible. The project has now been exposed. Nevertheless, books continue to be destroyed on a massive scale.
Source: https://www.freiewelt.net/artikel/redaktion/christliches/das-kulturverbrechen-der-millionfachen-buecherzerstoerung-geht-weiter-mehrere-ki-tech-giganten-sollen-beteiligt-sein/44890, 19 August 2026
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)