By Patti JohnsonAugust 3, 2026AI companies are buying physical books by the thousands and even the millions. Books printed before 2022 are especially prized because they contain no AI written text: “AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They’re Free of AI Slop”[1]The destruction is permanent. The dumbing down of society and the quiet disappearance of physical books from our own shelves carries an uncomfortable echo of that moment. The same technological system that shortened attention spans and literacy is now destroying the physical books that once rewarded deep attention. Physical books printed before the current wave of chatbots remain one of the last large collections of pure human writing.