More than a dozen advocacy groups asked the Federal Trade Commission to probe leading AI developers for allegedly buying books in bulk, scanning them to train large language models, and then destroying the physical copies—conduct they say could be anticompetitive under Section 5 of the FTC Act. In a letter to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Mark Meador, the groups warned that “hoard-and-destroy” tactics could restrict access to essential source material and entrench dominant players. The complaint cites an August 2024 copyright suit against Anthropic; a judge in 2025 ruled Anthropic’s use of lawfully purchased books to train its Claude model did not violate copyright. A separate report said Amazon has pursued similar practices; both companies declined to comment. The groups urged the FTC to assess the scope of book destruction, including whether some discarded titles were among the last surviving copies.
Advocacy groups allege AI firms are stockpiling, scanning, and destroying millions of books
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