Second-hand book sale boom may be fuelled by AI training

Second-hand booksellers across Britain have reported a surge in bulk orders of old and obscure titles, raising speculation that the purchases may be linked to AI companies seeking training material. At Barter Books in Northumberland, owner Stuart Manley said a single order from a Canadian company matched nearly a full week's normal sales, something he had never seen in three decades.

The theory gained force after a 2025 US court ruling involving Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot. A federal judge ruled that using lawfully purchased books to train AI could be fair use. Court documents later revealed that some physical books had been destroyed after being digitised for AI training, a process called destructive scanning that involves removing a book's spine to feed pages through industrial scanners.

Times Now News reports. UK copyright law does not automatically permit copying books for AI training, said Oxford University professor Emily Hudson, meaning practices allowed in the US may not apply in Britain. Booksellers are uneasy: selling long-unsold stock is commercially attractive, but some worry the books may be destroyed. No proof links the recent orders to Anthropic or any other AI company.