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Boing Boing

AI companies are buying up old books to escape their own AI slop

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 22, 2026
∙ Paid
Ch. Maderthoner / CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)

AI companies are facing a data problem of their own making: the open web is clogged with AI-generated text, and training new models on that sludge invites “model collapse,” where machines degrade by eating their own output. One company is filling the need for human-written content by buying old printed books in b…

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