When an email requesting quotes for more than 3,000 books landed in Pieter de Vries's inbox in Haarlem, the antiquarian bookseller assumed it was spam.

The sender, identifying herself as Natalia from a company called 2077AI, had attached a spreadsheet of ISBNs and asked for shipping estimates to China. De Vries ignored it, until a journalist investigating the request later told him it was connected to artificial intelligence.

Why are AI labs turning to physical books?

This spreadsheet featured 3,001 books, largely from 2020........

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