UK and Irish Booksellers Report Unusual Bulk Orders Amid AI Data Speculation
Secondhand bookshops in Britain and Ireland say opaque buyers are placing large, thematically random orders, prompting unconfirmed speculation that some purchases may be intended for artificial-intelligence training data.
In short
- Secondhand bookshops in Britain and Ireland say opaque buyers are placing large, thematically random orders, prompting unconfirmed speculation that some purchases may be intended for artificial-intelligence training data.
Secondhand booksellers in the United Kingdom and Ireland are reporting an unusual wave of large, seemingly unrelated orders, raising questions about whether buyers may be acquiring printed material for artificial-intelligence training.
The buyers’ purpose has not been established. Booksellers interviewed by The Guardian described orders spanning unrelated subjects, languages and editions, often placed without requests for the discounts normally associated with bulk purchases. Some sellers said the pattern began in May, while others reported activity over several months.
Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, said it had sold hundreds of assorted books to three buyers for about £4,000. MW Books in Claregalway, Ireland, also reported large orders with little thematic connection. BookLovers of Bath said it received a rush of requests for roughly 200 books between May and July.
One British seller, who was not identified, said similar buyers had ordered about 6,000 books since January. The seller told the newspaper that different buyer names sometimes used the same delivery address and that at least one postcode led to freight warehouses near Heathrow Airport.
The transactions have led some booksellers to suspect that AI developers or data suppliers may be seeking material that is unavailable online. That remains speculation: no purchaser was conclusively tied to an AI company in the report, and some requested works are already available digitally.
The concern is shaped by previously reported industry practices. Anthropic has acknowledged that books are among the commercially acquired materials used in developing large language models. The company said its acquisition programmes do not buy and destroy rare or antiquarian books. Reports earlier in 2026 said the company had bought and scanned large numbers of books as part of its data collection.
Older and obscure printed works can offer model developers text that is absent from the public web and predates the rapid spread of AI-generated content. That potential value has created new demand for data, but it has also intensified debate over copyright, provenance and the physical fate of books used for scanning.
Marketplaces including Biblio and Amazon-owned AbeBooks were contacted by The Guardian for comment. A Canada-based business named in connection with some orders was also approached. The report did not include responses from those organisations.
For booksellers, the immediate effect is more practical than theoretical: unexpected high-volume orders can strain small operations, while the lack of transparency leaves sellers unsure whether the surge is temporary or signals a new source of demand in the secondhand-book trade.
