Company Offering Printed Books To Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
(Monday August 03, 2026 @11:00AM (BeauHD)
from the would-you-look-at-that dept.)
- Reference: 0184826550
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/08/03/0714207/company-offering-printed-books-to-train-ai-stops-after-404-media-coverage
- Source link:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media:
> Following [1]404 Media's reporting that book database company ISBNdb claimed to source printed books to then sell to AI companies for AI training, the company [2]deleted the part of its website offering the service and walked back claims that it would train AI models, and instead called it "a test of market interest."
>
> On July 30, nine days after 404 Media's reporting, ISBNdb added a note to its homepage and an update on its [3]news page about the change. "We've seen the recent coverage about a marketing landing page on our site, and we understand the concern it raised. The facts: ISBNdb has never purchased, scanned, or sold a book -- for AI training or anything else," ISBNdb wrote. "We don't train AI models, and we never have. The page was a test of market interest; no such service was ever brought to life. We've taken the page down. Our job is helping people find books. For more than two decades, ISBNdb has been the card catalog of the book world -- the data behind how bookstores, libraries, and reading apps connect readers with titles. Data about books, not the books themselves. That hasn't changed."
>
> ISBNdb removed the landing page for " [4]Printed Books Sourcing for Your AI LLMs Dataset Needs " on July 28. "It was part of exploring demand, and we've chosen to pivot away from that direction. Our main ISBNdb (book metadata API) services are unaffected and running as usual," the site says.
According to 404 Media's previous report, ISBNdb had pitched pre-2022 printed books as premium AI training material because they contained curated human knowledge without contamination from AI-generated text or modern data-poisoning techniques. "The world's best AI training data is sitting on a shelf," the company had argued, while offering discreet bulk book acquisition under NDAs and acknowledging the potential backlash if AI firms were seen destroying millions of books for scanning.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/07/21/206243/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-free-of-ai-slop
[2] https://www.404media.co/ai-company-training-scanning-books-database-isbndb/
[3] https://isbndb.com/news
[4] https://isbndb.com/print-books-for-ai-training
> Following [1]404 Media's reporting that book database company ISBNdb claimed to source printed books to then sell to AI companies for AI training, the company [2]deleted the part of its website offering the service and walked back claims that it would train AI models, and instead called it "a test of market interest."
>
> On July 30, nine days after 404 Media's reporting, ISBNdb added a note to its homepage and an update on its [3]news page about the change. "We've seen the recent coverage about a marketing landing page on our site, and we understand the concern it raised. The facts: ISBNdb has never purchased, scanned, or sold a book -- for AI training or anything else," ISBNdb wrote. "We don't train AI models, and we never have. The page was a test of market interest; no such service was ever brought to life. We've taken the page down. Our job is helping people find books. For more than two decades, ISBNdb has been the card catalog of the book world -- the data behind how bookstores, libraries, and reading apps connect readers with titles. Data about books, not the books themselves. That hasn't changed."
>
> ISBNdb removed the landing page for " [4]Printed Books Sourcing for Your AI LLMs Dataset Needs " on July 28. "It was part of exploring demand, and we've chosen to pivot away from that direction. Our main ISBNdb (book metadata API) services are unaffected and running as usual," the site says.
According to 404 Media's previous report, ISBNdb had pitched pre-2022 printed books as premium AI training material because they contained curated human knowledge without contamination from AI-generated text or modern data-poisoning techniques. "The world's best AI training data is sitting on a shelf," the company had argued, while offering discreet bulk book acquisition under NDAs and acknowledging the potential backlash if AI firms were seen destroying millions of books for scanning.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/07/21/206243/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-free-of-ai-slop
[2] https://www.404media.co/ai-company-training-scanning-books-database-isbndb/
[3] https://isbndb.com/news
[4] https://isbndb.com/print-books-for-ai-training
Re: (Score:2)
by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 )
Since the scanning technique is to slice off the binding, remove the cover, and then auto-feed the pages through a high-speed scanner, it destroys the books anyway, regardless of the "stupid law".
Re: fuck 404media scumbags (Score:1)
by NoorElahi1776 ( 10138383 )
Wrong forum. You want Reddit.
Remember when libraries had books? (Score:1)
by NoorElahi1776 ( 10138383 )
They were all destroyed 15 years ago and nobody said a peep. All of those books went to the landfill. It happened in every university across the country. Now they're being sold for money and used one last time before they're destroyed. This sound is infinitely better than the recent past.
Investigative reporting still works (Score:2)
by flibbidyfloo ( 451053 )
This sort of result from people doing the actual work of reporting is why I now support outlets like 404 Media and Popular Information instead of WaPo and NYT.
Get the scumbags destroying books (Score:2)
We need to name and shame any bastards who bought rare books to scan and then *destroy* them.
Re: Get the scumbags destroying books (Score:1)
It didn't happen. They bought bulk books. Rare books cost money, they needed lots of words on the cheap. That's it.
Re: (Score:3)
You really think the AI companies would be price-sensitive?
They need pre-AI books, and they need lots of varied data. I doubt they are worrying about the cost.
"John Sainsbury, owner of Melbourne's Sainsburys Books, confirmed a slew of orders from Zoom Books had come through the store's online listings around the same time. The orders were price insensitive and appeared entirely random - niche titles, "bottom-end" and sometimes decades-old stock. The orders resulted in Sainsburys shipping multiple boxes over