“Horrific.” “Physically abhorrent.” “Skynet behaviour.” These were some of the reactions surrounding Stephanie Convery’s recent Guardian article, “‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI.” It describes “destructive scanning”, buying books, removing their spines, scanning the pages, then pulping what remains. What is it, exactly, that unsettles us when a book is destroyed? Is it the loss of the object, the threat to its ideas, or the sense that something meant to be preserved has instead been treated as rather expendable? It asks for a reaction and for us to come to conclusions.
Literature has always organised stories around a central conflict: man against man, nature, society, himself. Now it seems to have turned to: man against machine. The frame may be new, but history has long shown how fast fear can turn ideas into enemies. In Jeremiah, an intolerable prophetic warning is cut apart and fed piece by piece to the fire. Qin Shi Huang destroyed histories that challenged imperial control, while the Nazis burned works and ideas they considered dangerous. Again and again, thought, wisdom and dissent became victims of the flames because somebody wanted to control and certain ideas silenced. Today, the logic is almost reversed, just as the physical book can be destroyed because its contents are considered valuable enough to extract.
A 2025 Forbes analysis notes that Judge William Alsup found both AI training on copyrighted books and the digitisation of lawfully purchased print copies fair use under the facts before him. Anthropic had envisioned a library of “all the books in the world.” Legally, the court treated the digital file as a replacement for the physical book.But if the words survive while the object disappears, what exactly have we preserved?
I have always loved literature and classical texts, and have gone lengths to find particular editions even when I could download the same words from internet archives. Yes, a book carries the story inside it, but it also tells a story simply by its paper, or annotations from previous readers. It’s something to hold, keep and eventually pass on. Yet is an unread book gathering dust automatically better preserved? Books are remaindered, recycled, given away, forgotten. “I just want them all digitised so they’re not lost.”
So who is writing the story I am reacting to? Who benefits? Whose definition of value am I accepting? AI did not decide what mattered, but instead, people chose the objectives and the process. A camera can extend a photographer’s vision, but it cannot provide the eye. Perhaps the question is not Man versus Machine at all, but whether we are still willing to judge and decide for ourselves what matters.
References and Links
Boissoneault, L. (2017, August 31). A brief history of book burning, from the printing press to Internet archives. Smithsonian Magazine.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/brief-history-book-burning-printing-press-internet-archives-180964697/
Convery, S. (2026, August 2). ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/02/australian-book-sellers-alarm-destruction-rare-titles-ai-supply-chain
Joyce, E. (2026, July 1). Bookshops offer much more than just retail – but who would open one in this economy? The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/01/bookshops-australia-industry-decline-economy
Nelson, D. (2025, July 2). Copyrighted books are fair use for AI training. Here’s what to know. Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalentertainment/2025/07/02/copyrighted-books-are-fair-use-for-ai-training-heres-what-to-know/
Reddit. (2026, August 2). ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI. r/australia.
https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1vd5hw4/more_than_just_objects_australian_booksellers/
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2025, July 28). Nazi book burnings. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning
Bible Gateway. (n.d.). Jeremiah 36: Jehoiakim burns Jeremiah’s scroll (New International Version).
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2036&version=NIV
Debbie Choo 
Bethany Miguel 
Tarkyn Sharples