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So your whole story is that a company is buying lots of used books, none of which are actually rare, and that this must be from AI companies, but it turns out that the company is just a reseller that the AI companies don’t even use? Talk about AI psychosis.

I don't know about this particular article, but it's true that Anthropic (and who knows who else) is going around buying, scanning, and destroying old books by the millions. At that scale, you can easily see how a out-of-print book that is not rare will quickly become rare or even gone

I don't think they're looking at what they're scanning, judging by how much they are bulk buying. It's like when Reddit was used for AI: I'm pretty sure they didn't sort through posts to remove duplicates, they just swallowed all of it

can confirm that Books for Cooks' Tim White was a pleasure to speak with & knew every Alan Davidson title in his inventory!

Yung En Chee@yungenchee.bsky.social

Scored a beautiful edition of Alan Davidson's magnificent Seafood of South-East Asia at the Melbourne Rare Book Fair (free entry, ends today) This version has gorgeous colour plates by artist Tang Ying Wei & a Dedication written with Davidson's characteristic charm, wit & erudition 💙