Civil society groups push FTC to sue AI companies over book destruction
Deliberately destroying rare books might be the final straw in the eyes of the Federal Trade Commission.
Earlier this month, civil society groups urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate AI companies for allegedly destroying physical copies of books to train their AI agents. The groups argue that this practice, reminiscent of book burning, could violate antitrust laws by raising costs for competing AI agents and denying them access to essential source material.
The groups include Demand Progress Education Fund, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. They urge the FTC to view this practice as part of a broader pattern of anticompetitive behavior designed to create a barrier around AI incumbents. The destruction of older books, particularly those published before 2022, is especially concerning, as these books are unlikely to have been written by AI and are more likely to have been well edited.
The groups also note that this practice undermines the concept of knowledge as a utility, likening it to selling electricity or water, when it involves the wholesale destruction of books, a primary repository for human knowledge.
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