booksSunday, June 21, 2026

Anthropic destroyed millions of books for AI training

The book world woke up to a strange story: Anthropic physically destroyed millions of print books to scan them for AI training. It's a jarring collision of old and new media, and it dominated the conversation. Elsewhere, a security researcher turned a smart lightbulb into a banned-book library, and writers' festivals are being called the new raves.

Sources

AI vs. books

The biggest story of the day is a stark reminder that AI's hunger for data has physical consequences for the book industry.

#01arstechnica.comJun 21

Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models

Court documents reveal Anthropic physically cut apart and scanned millions of print books to build its Claude AI model, hiring Google's former book-scanning chief with the goal of digitizing 'all the books in the world.' The details emerge from a copyright fair-use ruling, making this a key data point in the ongoing battle between publishers and AI companies.

6 min readRead original

#02www.tomshardware.comJun 21

Researcher turns wi-fi smart lightbulb into a Banned Book Library — open source project makes digital books available via a server and open Wi-Fi access point hacked into an ESP32-powered bulb

A security researcher hacked an ESP32-powered smart lightbulb to store and distribute banned books via an open Wi-Fi access point, creating a 'cyberpunk digital dead drop.' The project is fully open source and offers a clever, low-tech workaround for censorship.

4 min readRead original

The reading life

Lighter fare today: a solstice giveaway, a reflection on collective reading, and a preview of a thriller.

#03www.crystalking.comJun 21

Summer Solstice Book Giveaway

A summer solstice book giveaway features 21 books from 21 authors, valued at nearly $500, running through July 1. Two featured titles are 'Swallowtail' by Emily Ross and 'The Happiness Collector' by Crystal King.

#04www.theguardian.comJun 21

Writers’ festivals are the new raves – and as a born-again book reader I couldn’t be happier about the upsurge in collectivism

A Guardian essay argues that writers' festivals are the new raves, celebrating a collective return to physical books and shared reading experiences as a counter to digital isolation.

#05amzn.toJun 21

Amazon.com: The Spy Coast: A Thriller (The Martini Club Book 1) eBook : Gerritsen, Tess: Kindle Store

Tess Gerritsen's 'The Spy Coast' kicks off a new thriller series about a retired CIA operative pulled back into danger. The review calls it engaging from the start.

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