AI

Canadian company Zoom Books has responded to accusations that they are purchasing out of print books in bulk from bookstores to sell to AI companies for LLM training. They write in a statement to PL that the claims made in Demócrata that books purchased by Zoom Books from Spanish booksellers are being scraped for AI are “categorically false.” “To be unequivocally clear: Zoom Books does not digitize or destroy used or new books for the purpose of training AI models, nor for any other purpose,” writes the company. “Any claim or implication to the contrary is inaccurate.” They continue: “Our business […]

Canadian company Zoom Books is buying out of print books in bulk from used bookstores all over the world to scrape them for LLM training. Multiple bookstores in Spain recently flagged unusual orders, writes Demócrata. One store, Fènix in Badalona, noted that orders focused on “Catalan non-fiction titles that had been stored for years and had practically no commercial outlet.” Demócrata notes that “stores in Germany, the USA, New Zealand, and Australia have received similar orders, some of more than a thousand books, many out of print.” Zoom Books writes on its website that it buys used books and accepts […]

Responding to online criticism, Barnes & Noble ceo James Daunt tempered remarks he made earlier this week in a Today Show interview, in which he said that the chain would stock AI-created books as long as they were clearly labeled. “I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it,” Daunt told book club host and imprint publisher Jenna Bush Hager. “So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an […]