Australian Booksellers Warn AI Over Zoom Books' Rare Book Purchases

Australian booksellers and rare‑book experts have raised concerns that rare and historically valuable books are being bought in large, irregular orders by Canadian company Zoom Books and then destroyed to create training data for artificial‑intelligence models. Sellers such as John Sainsbury of Sainsburys Books reported receiving “completely random” requests for hundreds of niche titles, many decades old, with no price discussion. Sainsbury said, "Non c’è stato alcun dibattito sul prezzo, e i libri erano di tipo diverso da quelli che normalmente si vendono."

The practice, described by some as "destructive scanning," involves cutting covers and shredding the remaining material after digitisation. Booksellers including Gwenyth Todd of Chatelaine Books warned, "Per me i libri sono più di semplici oggetti," emphasizing the cultural loss. Zoom Books, co‑founded by Manroop Gill, claims it purchases used books for resale and recycles those that cannot be placed, but it has not confirmed whether the books are destroyed for AI purposes. The alert highlights tensions between the preservation of rare literature and the growing demand for data to train AI systems.