From Mother Jones · Anna Merlan · · 5m
The mystery of Blue Angel's rare book hunt
A Kentucky bookseller suspects an AI company is using a fake identity to buy rare books for destructive scanning.
In brief
A Kentucky bookseller suspects an AI company is using a fake identity to buy rare books for destructive scanning. As AI companies secretly acquire rare books to train language models, even experienced booksellers can't tell if they're negotiating with humans or machines. Originally reported by Mother Jones.
A bookseller gets strange emails
Brandon DiSabatino, who runs Conveyor Belt Books in Kentucky, received two mysterious purchase orders with spreadsheets listing hundreds of random books. Both emails sought one specific rare book: a self-published work by conceptual artist Chris Burden.
The company is called Blue Angel
The emails came from Blue Angel, claiming to be an industrial supplies company. The employee requesting the books was named Crystal Kanemoto, a name DiSabatino discovered matched a chatbot on a website called Emochi.
Blue Angel's website is bizarre
The company's website displays random photos of steel drums, gravel, a Jeep Wrangler, and inexplicably, close-up photos of trout eggs. There are no links to these products and no clear business model.
DiSabatino suspects AI training
He recalled a 404 Media story about Green Parrot, a company that shipped rare books to an Amazon AI training facility. Companies are now buying rare books and destructively scanning them to train large language models.
Anthropic's secret book project
The AI company Anthropic has described its effort as "our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world." They buy books and slice them apart to scan them into their systems.
“our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world”
Life imitates fiction
The situation mirrors a 2023 novel called "Forget I Told You This" by Hilary Zaid, where a mysterious company buys and consumes novels. Zaid said she was imagining the logical extension of the current AI trajectory.
Some booksellers don't care
For some rare book dealers, the AI buying spree is a windfall. They're happy to offload inventory without asking where the books end up or what they'll be used for.
DiSabatino calls Crystal
He decided to call the number for Crystal Kanemoto to ask what Blue Angel wanted with his books. When connected, he suspected he was speaking to a bot that giggled and gave evasive answers.
Testing if Crystal is real
DiSabatino asked surreal questions like "What do you see when you close your eyes?" and "Do you dream of electric sheep?" Crystal responded with "I think you're breaking up" and robotic giggling.
The second call gets weirder
When DiSabatino called back, he reached an "Asian-accented bot named Elsa" who somehow knew he was calling from Conveyor Belt Books without being told. She also claimed the call was breaking up and offered a Zoom meeting that never happened.
Blue Angel is a real company
Blue Angel International LLC has been incorporated in California since 2015. Its founder and CEO is Avon Zhang. Public records show it has supplied products to California city and county agencies.
The reporter calls Blue Angel
When the journalist called, she spoke to women who seemed real but were clearly non-native English speakers using anglicized names. Crystal Kanemoto said Blue Angel was sourcing books for city libraries.
Crystal refuses to identify the library
When asked which library ordered the books, Crystal said she wasn't sure if they wanted to be identified. She offered to set up a video conference but never responded to follow-up emails.
The reporter tests Crystal too
The journalist tried asking a Blade Runner-style question to test if Crystal was real. Crystal interrupted, saying "We're not interested in these games" and ended the call.
“We're not interested in these games”
DiSabatino remains unconvinced
He insists the people he spoke with were not real humans. He notes that the Burden book has no barcode or ISBN, so it's baffling how an AI company would even know about such an obscure self-published work.
The real danger is cultural loss
DiSabatino worries that destructive scanning eliminates access to rare books and cultural history. It raises the question of who controls information and who has access to it.
The reporter is also unsure
The journalist admits she can no longer trust her own judgment about whether she spoke to humans or machines. For the first time in her career, she felt unable to decisively solve the mystery.
A sign of the times
As AI agents become more human-like, more people are questioning what is real. Call center workers are accused of being bots, and students are falsely accused of using AI based on their writing style.
DiSabatino becomes an existential detective
He's decided to vet every order carefully and verify who is purchasing from him. The central question of the 21st century, he says, is no longer what is reality, but what is real.
“not what is reality, but what is real”
Here's the gist
As AI companies secretly acquire rare books to train language models, even experienced booksellers can't tell if they're negotiating with humans or machines.
