Advocacy Groups Urge FTC to Probe AI Firms Over Book Destruction in Training Data Practices

More than a dozen public interest and consumer advocacy groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate leading artificial intelligence developers for allegedly buying, scanning and destroying books used to train their large language models, a practice the organizations described as "destructive" and anticompetitive. In a letter to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Mark Meador on Friday, the Demand Progress Education Fund, Consumer Federation of America and Institute for Local Self-Reliance, among other groups, said the AI companies are buying books in bulk, digitizing the content to train their AI apps and then destroying the physical copies. In some cases, the destroyed books are among the last surviving copies of original works, according to the letter.

Such "hoard-and-destroy" practices, as critics call them, could make it harder for the public and for other AI companies to access essential source material, the groups argue. Destroying books could also constitute an unfair method of competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bars unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce, they allege.