Groups ask the FTC to investigate an alleged AI book hoard-and-destroy pipeline
More than a dozen public-interest and consumer groups asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that major AI developers bulk-purchased print books, digitized them for model training, and destroyed the physical copies. CBS News reports that the letter calls the practice hoard-and-destroy and argues it could be an unfair method of competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act. The groups want the agency to determine the scale and whether any destroyed books were among the last surviving copies. The allegation is not a finding of wrongdoing, and the named companies did not immediately comment to CBS. A 2025 federal ruling in separate litigation found that training on legally purchased books was not copyright infringement, but competition, preservation, and access raise different questions. When source material is converted into proprietary capability and then removed from circulation, the public can lose both access and the ability to audit what trained the system.
