TNW 451: AI Is Eating Rare Books - Rare Books Gutted for AI Training

TNW 451: AI Is Eating Rare Books - Rare Books Gutted for AI Training

August 20, 2026 · 1h 8m · Episode 451

About this episode

The episode discusses the implications of AI training on rare books and features reviews of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold and concerns about workplace privacy with smart glasses.

Abrar Al-Heeti of CNET joins the show to talk about her review of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, Meta's smart glasses are slowly becoming a concern in the workplace, and Amazon is destroying rare books & utilizing them as AI training data. Abrar Al-Heeti shares her review of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, noting how foldables have become nearly indistinguishable in size from standard phones like the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and shares a look at its camera, battery, and new software features like Pause Point. Mikah shares an article published by The Verge that looks into how retail workers, tourism employees, and comedians describe being secretly recorded by Meta Ray-Ban wearers on the job. And 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg joins the show to share his investigation into Amazon buying and shredding rare, out-of-print books to scan them as AI training data, and how a legal ruling in Anthropic's book-piracy case made destroying the originals advantageous. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Abrar Al-Heeti Guest: Emanuel Maiberg Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly . Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a…

People in this episode

Host: Mikah Sargent

Guests: Abrar Al-Heeti, Emanuel Maiberg

Topics covered

Keywords

Sponsors

box.com, cirasync.com

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CNET, Meta, Amazon, The Verge, 404 Media

Products: Pixel 11 Pro Fold, iPhone 17 Pro Max

Books & works: Anthropic's book-piracy case

More episodes of Tech News Weekly (Video)

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Tech News Weekly (Video) podcast page.