Anthropic's mass book buying in Japan stirs publisher backlash

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Nippan Group Holdings Inc., operator of Nippon Shuppan Hanbai Inc., has admitted to selling a substantial quantity of books to U.S. AI firm Anthropic, according to a publishing industry insider. The company confirmed the transactions in response to a query from the Japan Book Publishers Association. The Japanese publishing sector is increasingly apprehensive that the books may have subsequently had their spines removed for scanning the content to train AI models.

The association inquired about the matter after documents filed in a U.S. copyright lawsuit showed Anthropic had preliminary discussions with Nippan Japan to acquire books in bulk. The association requested whether the books sold to Anthropic included titles from member companies of the association, as per the source. Additionally, they sought the wholesaler's perspective on selling a significant volume of books to foreign entities without obtaining consent from publishers.

The source emphasized that it would be unfortunate if the company had sold books aware that they would be utilized to train AI. The group confirmed to the association that one of its entities had sold books to Anthropic for about a year starting in December 2024, but they did so without being aware that the transactions were meant to facilitate AI training.