Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
404 Media Samantha Cole
ISBNdb, a book database company, removed a website service offering to source printed books for AI companies to use as training data after 404 Media reported on the practice. The company claimed it never actually purchased or scanned books and described the offering as merely "a test of market interest," though internal materials acknowledged concerns about the optics of destroying books at scale. ISBNdb's withdrawal follows a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic for similar book-scanning practices, signaling growing pushback against using printed books harvested from secondhand markets to train AI models.
Why it matters
Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."
