Japan used bookstores see surge in orders suspected to be for AI training

Japanese used bookstores have reported a surge in mysterious, large-scale orders since August. Many shops have seen daily sales spike significantly, with orders for niche professional subjects—such as philosophy, medicine, and history—being sent to a single logistics center in Okayama Prefecture. Industry observers suspect these books are being collected to serve as training data for artificial intelligence.

Investigations into trade data revealed that a major Japanese publishing distributor has exported over 50 tons of Japanese books to the United States since last year. This follows reports of AI companies, such as Anthropic and Amazon, allegedly acquiring, scanning, and destroying physical books to digitize content for model training. While Japanese copyright law generally permits the use of works for AI training, the scale and method of these acquisitions have sparked debate regarding the potential harm to copyright holders' interests.