View Pages
Are AI Labs Destroying Rare Books to Train Models?
Fortune reporters reveal booksellers’ strange orders suggesting AI firms scan—and possibly destroy—rare books to train models; investigation and implications.
Editorial companion
What stands out
Fortune put a spotlight on an odd new complaint: booksellers are receiving orders that appear intended to be scanned and then discarded, raising questions about how artificial intelligence (AI) labs gather training material. Bea Nolan and Emily Forlini walk through specific instances where rare volumes may have been treated this way, which is less a literary scandal than a data-governance problem. ServiceNow appears as the episode sponsor, a reminder that enterprise software makers are already positioning to help companies track provenance, permissions, and audit trails for AI training data, and that this cultural dustup could become a commercial hook for governance tools.