A bookseller in Galway has told RTE.ie that a large, seemingly random order of books may have been placed for the purpose of training artificial intelligence systems. The order, described as a "scattergun" purchase, appeared to lack any coherent theme or focus, according to the report.
The seller, who spoke to RTE.ie, said the sheer variety and volume of titles in the order made it stand out from typical customer purchases. The lack of a clear subject matter or genre led the bookseller to suspect the buyer was not a human reader, but rather an entity gathering data to feed into an AI model.
RTE.ie reports that the bookseller's suspicion is based on the unusual pattern of the order, which did not seem to follow a logical selection process. The term "scattergun" implies a random, wide-ranging selection of books, which is not characteristic of a collector or a student building a library on a specific topic.
This incident highlights a growing trend where AI developers acquire large text corpora to improve language models. Books, with their long-form and varied prose, are a valuable resource for training these systems. The Galway bookseller's experience suggests that this practice may be reaching local, independent retailers, who are now seeing orders that do not fit traditional consumer behavior.
The story serves as a reminder of the changing nature of the book market, where demand is no longer driven solely by human readers. It remains to be seen how many other independent sellers are encountering similar requests and how the industry will adapt to this new source of demand.
