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Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage (www.404media.co)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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."

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[–] 82 points 3 months ago (5 children)

In ISBNdb’s now-removed marketing materials, it admitted that getting caught destroying printed books during the scanning process would not be a good look. “The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site said. “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”

So their solution was to do the evil thing secretly?

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago

    They say we shouldn't attribute to malice what could be attributed to stupidity, let's try that :

    "Wait, people searching for books don't like that we help destroy real books en masse to feed the infinite fake book machines? Oh, my bad, we hadn't realized, we're not doing that then."

    Yeah, I'm not absolutely convinced.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago*

    AI companies know that the public loves books so they tried to hide their shame. Their next approach will be to make us hate books so destroying them is fine. Stories will be lauded while the book format will be dismissed. Many discussions and comparisons of "book vs (insert media)" will start to pop up. Just watch.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago

    The "evil thing" is to sell a back catalog of physical books that they can't move on the retail or wholesale markets.

    Idk why people are heavily invested in books moldering in a warehouse. It's not some kind of virtue that we have this staggering overproduction of physical media that we've horded for nobody in particular.

    If doing this thing just results in people screaming at them, of course they're going to take down their advertisements. But of course they're going to keep doing it. Why would they stop? Who else buys a bunch of first print draft copies of books that never sold?

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