THE U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION WAS URGED TO INVESTIGATE THE DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS BY AI

On 23 August, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was being urged to investigate the acquisition of AI training data by AI by purchasing, scanning and destroying books. According to an open letter received by Axios, more than 10 civil society organizations have called on FTC to use its regulatory powers to review what large AI companies call "new ways to access destructive data". Previously, the Washington Post, citing court documents, reported that Anthropic had spent millions of dollars buying books and removing ridges and scanned pages for training Claude; Google, Microsoft and OpenAI had faced similar copyright litigation. These organizations would like FTC to further judge whether such conduct constitutes an unfair means of competition. In their view, AI, by acquiring and destroying entity books, may in fact have the potential to “empty” key data resources in the market, particularly in the light of which some rare books may disappear permanently, while digital companies have copies of the last entities. Organizations have warned that this practice of "assembly and destroy" may increase the cost of data acquisition by competitors, while cutting off the important raw material on which AI started the training model, thereby further expanding the competitive barriers to head AI firms. However, these organizations do not require FTC to restrict AI training, but rather want regulators to focus on reviewing the destruction of existing works and to intervene before large AI companies build market advantages. According to the open letter, this approach is not a mere data acquisition strategy, but could be another structural tool for the head AI enterprises to construct “unstoppable systematic moats”. Currently, the FTC, led by the Trump government, seeks to maintain a relatively friendly regulatory environment for US firms on the one hand, and to release concerns about market competition and the monopoly risks of large technology firms on the other。