FTC Must Investigate AI Book Burning

Demand Progress Education Fund and a coalition of civil society groups asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Friday to investigate AI companies Anthropic and Amazon for buying books in bulk, scanning them, and destroying the originals, including rare books. The letter urges the FTC to use its authority, including Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, to determine whether this practice unfairly prevents competing AI developers and the public from using these resources. Demand Progress Education Fund Special Advisor Kate Oh said the secretive actions of major AI companies warrant investigation, citing credible reporting that the industry acquires books on vast commercial scales to scan and destroy, keeping the scanned text in private databases.

On Friday, Demand Progress Education Fund and a coalition of civil society advocates asked the FTC to investigate AI companies like Anthropic https://us.list-manage.com/zvsSOAn5fE3?e=d347305a45&c2id=2316cfb0576a5fb9816f5f64299f8f05 and Amazon https://us.list-manage.com/OsXfSnGhGLi?e=d347305a45&c2id=2316cfb0576a5fb9816f5f64299f8f05 for buying books in bulk, scanning them and then destroying the original work—including rare books. In a letter sent to the FTC, the organizations urge the agency to use its authority, including Section 6 b of the FTC Act, to investigate whether this mass book-destroying practice unfairly prevents competing AI developers and the public from using these resources. Convened by Demand Progress Education Fund, the letter was also signed by the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Media & Digital Governance at Open Markets Institute, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and 14 other organizations. “The secretive and reckless way that major AI companies like Anthropic and Amazon are acting shows that there is real smoke here that the FTC needs to investigate,” said Demand Progress Education Fund Special Advisor Kate Oh . “There is credible reporting that the AI industry is acquiring books on vast commercial scales to scan and destroy, all to keep that scanned text in a private database walled off from the world and subject to corporate censorship and manipulation.” “When a small number of dominant tech companies become the sole custodians of millions of human-authored works in digital form, locked away inside proprietary corporate databases—including works they have caused to exist nowhere else—they convert a shared public resource into a private chokepoint,” stated the letter . “They make themselves the unaccountable gatekeepers of our shared historical and cultural record, with the ability to censor as they see fit. That outcome should concern the FTC because the antimonopoly laws exist not only to protect competition but to prevent any private actor from amassing control incompatible with a free and self-governing society.”