AI Firms Are Buying Old German Books in Bulk to Train Language Models

AI companies are purchasing large numbers of old books from German antiquarian bookstores to obtain valuable training data for language models, raising concerns over copyright and cultural preservation.
on Jul 20, 2026

The Race for Training Data Causes Artificial Intelligence Firms to Snatch Up Old German Books

Artificial intelligence firms are reported to be acquiring massive quantities of used and antique books from bookstores all over Germany, raising fears amongst book dealers regarding the future of these printed books. As per industry sources, a lot of book dealers have reportedly been receiving massive orders in the last few months, which have been their largest ever orders.

These orders mostly consist of books being ordered through the Canadian-American company named Zoom Books and mostly deal with academic books and specialized books. Regional histories, languages, economics, law, and other such scholarly books are especially in demand since these books contain language, writing, and history that hasn’t yet been digitized.

The increased demand comes as artificial intelligence developers look for new sources of high-quality training data after public and online sources have been drying out. Earlier research had pointed out that the artificial intelligence company called Anthropic bought millions of printed books, digitised them for artificial intelligence training purposes and then threw away the hard copies as part of their own project.

Now, German booksellers fear that a similar process might be replicated on the European market. Some of the concerns raised by the booksellers include the possibility of the books, which were bought in bulk, to be thrown away once they get digitised. Others have questioned whether the mass digitisation of the copyrighted books for artificial intelligence training is legal under current copyright legislation.

The development has sparked a debate about the balance between artificial intelligence developments and preserving the cultural heritage, with the booksellers asking industry bodies to take a closer look at the matter.