AI Companies Are Buying Rare Books Only To Destroy Them - Here's Why

All AI models require training. How would an image generator program know what "Ghibli-style" art looks like unless its developers feed it hundreds of images from Ghibli movies? Odds are, you have trained AI programs without knowing, but most models draw from existing content and just Frankenstein the information together without removing the originals. Anthropic's LLM is not like most models.

Anthropic has been purchasing millions of books, many rare (or at least difficult to obtain), for the purpose of a special "destructive scan" process. Labeled "Project Panama" in Anthropic's internal documents, the company isn't shredding the books after use, as some outlets have previously claimed, but it is cutting them up as part of the scanning process. Even though an Anthropic spokesperson (via Fortune) stated the company isn't buying "rare or antiquarian books" in order to scan and destroy them, but unearthed documents tell a very different story.

According to an internal memo dating back to April of 2024, Project Panama solely exists to "destructively scan all the books in the world", not just rare or expensive books; every single one on the planet. Plus, the name "Project Panama" isn't some silly codename. In the memo, Anthropic's VP, Tom Turvey, stated the codename is meant to obfuscate the project's activities — he didn't want anyone outside the company knowing what they were doing. Really makes you want to reconsider using Anthropic Claude.

The term "destructive scanning" wasn't coined by an outlet reporting on the subject. Tom Turvey came up with it. Normally, when you think about scanning books, your mind probably jumps to placing the item in a photocopier or an obsolete scanner and pressing the "Scan" button, and then flipping to a new page and repeating the process. But that's too slow for Anthropic. When 404 Media reported on Project Panama, it delivered two key takeaways.

First, the outlet claimed that Anthropic was buying old books in bulk because they were free of any AI influence. What better way to train a model to write content that sounds less like your standard AI slop? More importantly, Anthropic engaged in destructive scanning because it is "faster and cheaper" than the alternative. Just slice the book down the spine, separate the pages, and feed them into a scanning machine.

We would like to point out that plenty of companies sell devices designed to scan books without ripping them apart. These include SMA Australia's Robo Scan line of robotic book scanners and the Treventus ScanRobot. Such devices could help scan the books Anthropic has purchased without damaging them, which is a major concern of critics, especially since the company is targeting hard-to-acquire books. Audiences would be less interested in using Blu-ray players to preserve their retro game libraries if the devices shredded their game discs in the process, and the same is true here.

According to Anthropic's own internal memo, Project Panama had already scanned (and effectively shredded) millions of books by October of 2024. To make matters worse, bookstores have recently seen an uptick in "mysterious bulk orders," specifically for "uncommon books" that are "unlikely to sell." The running theory is that AI companies (plural) are behind these purchases, which, if true, means that Anthropic isn't the only company running its own Project Panama.

Due to a general lack of information, though, there is no way to know how many books have already been sacrificed in the name of AI models, let alone if some copies were the last of their kind. While nobody knows the true scope of the destructive scanning processes, not every AI company is supporting the procedure. Probably. Hopefully.

Elon Musk publicly posted on X that he "asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve any rare books in a library and scan them the hard way," which seemingly solidifies which side of the aisle he stands. However, remember when he claimed he was skilled at video games but was outed as paying other players to make him look good? Or was caught orchestrating a misinformation campaign about the U.S. election? Don't be surprised if SpaceXAI is caught destructively scanning books in the near future.