national
Consumer Groups Petition FTC to Investigate AI Developers Over Book Destruction
Just the facts
Organizations including Demand Progress Education Fund, Consumer Federation of America, and Institute for Local Self-Reliance filed a joint letter to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Mark Meador. The petition alleges that artificial intelligence companies purchase print books in bulk, digitize their content to train large language models, and subsequently destroy the physical copies. Advocacy groups argue that this practice reduces public access to written works and creates unfair competitive barriers under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The filing follows copyright litigation involving AI developer Anthropic and media reports concerning bulk book acquisitions by Amazon.
Why this is news
More than a dozen public interest and consumer advocacy organizations submitted a joint petition requesting a Federal Trade Commission investigation into artificial intelligence developers.
Sources
This summary is compiled strictly from the original reporting below.