AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
www.404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-free-of-ai-slop/Replying to @silence7@slrpnk.net
The worst part is that they are destroying the books afterwards.
Replying to @minus@lemmy.zip
Is it really destroying though? They’re digitizing them, and publishers still have the digital copies ready to print more at any time. So it’s not like they’re destroying the texts, they’re just shifting them.
Nobody complained when Google did this over a decade ago 🤷
When you say they’re “destroying the books” you make it sound like they’re erasing one of the last known copy of some important work when in reality, most of these books were purchased in bulk from bookstores and libraries that were planning on discarding them anyway.
Almost all these books were either headed to the dump or the recycling center. They’re just being digitized on the way.
Replying to @riskable@programming.dev
Nobody complained when Google did this over a decade ago 🤷
Yes they did?! That was a big controversy back in the day. You are engaging in historical revisionism right now.