According to publishing industry sources, a major Japanese book wholesaler admits that it has sold a large number of books to the American artificial intelligence company Anthropic. Nichibai Group Holdings, the parent company of Nippon Publishing & Sales Co., Ltd., recently confirmed the deal in a letter from the Japan Book Publishing Association. There are concerns within the Japanese publishing industry that the spine of these books may be removed for scanning and converted into digital data to train AI, and the books will be destroyed after the scan is complete. At the same time, the Association asked how this wholesaler views the sale of books in large quantities to overseas customers without permission from the publishing house. “It would be a shame if the company knew the books would be used for AI training and still sell them,” the source said. The source emphasized that permission from the author and publisher must be obtained before books can be used for such purposes. According to the source, the Japan Sales Group admitted to the Association that one of its subsidiaries will continue to sell books to Anthropic for about a year from December 2024, but argued that it did not know at the time that this batch of books was used for AI training.

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