Nippan Group Holdings, a major Japanese book wholesaler, confirmed it sold a significant volume of books to the US-based AI company Anthropic. The transaction was disclosed in a formal response to the Japan Book Publishers Association dated September 17.
According to the correspondence, a subsidiary of the Nippan Group began supplying books to Anthropic in December 2024. The arrangement continued for approximately one year. The wholesaler stated that it was unaware at the time of the sale that the materials were intended for artificial intelligence model training.
The Japan Book Publishers Association initiated the inquiry after court documents from a US copyright lawsuit revealed negotiations between Anthropic and the Japanese distributor. The association questioned whether the sold inventory included works from its member publishers and raised concerns regarding the lack of prior authorization for such bulk sales.
Industry sources express concern that the books were likely processed for digitization. This process typically involves removing book spines for scanning, followed by the destruction of the physical copies. The association maintains that using copyrighted material for AI training requires explicit permission from both authors and publishers.
