Wellington second-hand book store’s AI mystery

This is the story of a Wellington second hand bookstore called Bookhaven. It started getting orders that looked a lot like a shaggy dog story. A Canadian buyer was sending multiple book orders, sometimes minutes apart, for niche texts from the 80s on NZ-specific subjects. With a bit of sleuthing Bookhaven owner Annemarie Thorby reached the conclusion her store had been caught up in the global machinations of AI giants training their large language models, and sometimes destroying the books in the process. Annemarie Thorby spoke to Guyon Espiner.