Destructive AI.

RNZ reports on yet another distressing development due to the “AI” craze: When a Wellington second-hand bookstore started to get bulk book orders, owner Anne-Marie Thorby smelt a rat. A Canadian buyer was sending multiple book orders to Book Haven in Newtown, sometimes minutes apart, for niche texts on New Zealand specific subjects. “It started at the end of April. We do sell books all around the world and we were getting some from a company and it was just a couple of books and yay, they’re going to a far off place. Then that same week it was boom, suddenly the same company was sending us multiple orders, just minutes apart, huge orders. One order was for 71 books, and we physically can’t handle that.” The buyer wanted books with ISBNs (a unique code used to identify a specific book, edition, or format) from the 1970s and 1980s, she told RNZ’s Midday Report. “They were local non-fiction niche books, so New Zealand local history, a tourist pamphlet on Waitomo Caves, Māori language…