Used bookstores in Japan report a fivefold increase in sales, driven by bulk purchases of physical books. These acquisitions are allegedly intended for digitizing content to train artificial intelligence models, after which the physical copies are destroyed.
One notable shipment involved 50 tons of Japanese books sent to the United States, reportedly for Anthropic. Additionally, bookstores in western Japan have received requests to supply tens of thousands of volumes, with many orders directed to a single logistics center in Okayama Prefecture.
The demand has shifted toward academic and specialized literature, including philosophy, history, law, and medicine, moving away from traditional novels and comics. While businesses benefit from the current sales surge, owners express concern regarding the long-term impact on book availability and cultural heritage.
In Japan, scanning copyrighted materials for AI training is legal unless it is proven to infringe upon the rights of the copyright holder. However, the scale and clandestine nature of these operations raise questions about the lack of formal authorization for such mass digitization.
