Yeah that's exactly it. James Patterson, for example, has written dozens of books, and there are billions of his books alone. They're taking one of each, cutting off the binding, and scanning the pages. This is standard procedure for common books.

So why don't they want people knowing about it? Because a lot of people are anti-AI and will run misleading stories like this.

I'm as anti-AI as the next guy, but unlike other companies scraping all of reddit and stealing art off the Internet, these guys are doing it mostly properly by paying for the books. They still don't have a license to use the material in this manner, though.

That much was absolutely is something to get worked up about. Just because it happens more than people realize, that doesn't make it okay.

I don't mind if they destroy 10k copies of Fabio's books. It's probably not even half of the print run so for a thing, it's guaranteed to be no harm because there's enough copies around.

But when you say destroy ALL books, you're also talking about rare first edition of whatever Shakespeare did, and manuscripts of Beethoven, and authors that I am fond of but I have no chance to buy used or new, or find in a library, because it's not popular and/or is in a language that is not from the place I live. And that's not cool.

So first things first, no single entity can have access to all books. Not even reputable historians would get access to anything they just ask around. Then there's books that have few copies and no one has any clue where they are. Etc etc.