Following 404 Media’s reporting that book database company ISBNdb claimed to source printed books to then sell to AI companies for AI training, the company deleted the part of its website offering the service and walked back claims that it would train AI models, and instead called it “a test of market interest.”
On July 30, nine days after 404 Media’s reporting, ISBNdb added a note to its homepage and an update on its news page about the change. “We've seen the recent coverage about a marketing landing page on our site, and we understand the concern it raised. The facts: ISBNdb has never purchased, scanned, or sold a book — for AI training or anything else,” ISBNdb wrote. “We don't train AI models, and we never have. The page was a test of market interest; no such service was ever brought to life. We've taken the page down. Our job is helping people find books. For more than two decades, ISBNdb has been the card catalog of the book world — the data behind how bookstores, libraries, and reading apps connect readers with titles. Data about books, not the books themselves. That hasn't changed.”
ISBNdb removed the landing page for “Printed Books Sourcing for Your AI LLMs Dataset Needs” on July 28. “It was part of exploring demand, and we've chosen to pivot away from that direction. Our main ISBNdb (book metadata API) services are unaffected and running as usual,” the site says.
ISBNdb has not responded to any requests for comment from 404 Media.
In one now-removed article on its site, ISBNdb said that printed books published before 2022 are ideal for AI training data because they don’t include AI generated text, and ingesting these books could prevent model collapse. The article also suggested that book authors who might be opposed to this use of their work could just write with manipulating and sabotaging AI models in mind.
404 Media spoke to booksellers and saw reports online detailing a sudden uptick in sales recently. “It's not just the quantity, but the weirdness of the orders,” one bookseller told 404 Media. “The type of books [...] there's no rhyme or reason to it. Also, there's a total disregard for the price of the book. I've had some books that sold through this way that were [...] greatly overpriced. That's kind of a tell for AI because they have just so much money.”
“Purchasing paper books at scale from the secondary market does not deprive any creator of income they would otherwise have received,” one of ISBNdb’s now-removed pages said. “These are books that have already fully discharged their financial obligation to their creators.”
In January, book authors filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, revealing internal documents that showed Anthropic planned to obtain and scan millions of printed books and destroy them in the process. An investigation by the Washington Post found that Anthropic was buying books from a company called Better World Books, one of several marketplaces where libraries, retailers, and individuals sell books.
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.”
Emanuel Maiberg contributed reporting to this story.
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