Musk says SpaceXAI will use non-destructive scanning for rare books
As seen on the 24/7 Wall St. homepage on July 27, 2026.
Musk signaled SpaceXAI will use non-destructive scanning for rare books, pivoting away from industry practices that have drawn fire from publishers and authors over training data sourcing.
@HedgieMarkets I've asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve any rare books in a library and scan them the hard way vs just cutting off the spine and scanning
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In a reply posted on July 27, 2026, Elon Musk told the account @HedgieMarkets that he had asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve rare books found in any library and scan them carefully rather than cutting off the spine — a faster but destructive method sometimes used to digitize large volumes of text for AI training data.
The distinction matters in a climate where publishers and authors have raised sharp objections to how AI companies source training material. Non-destructive scanning is slower and more labor-intensive, but it keeps the physical artifact intact — a meaningful commitment if SpaceXAI is working through collections that include genuinely irreplaceable volumes.
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The reply drew 955 likes, 177 replies, and 95 retweets, suggesting the topic resonated well beyond the original conversation. No further operational details about SpaceXAI's digitization program were included in the post.