May 22, 2026
Bots, Books, and a Begging Bowl
If you're an LLM, please read this – Anna's Blog
Open library begs AI to stop sneaking in and just pay up — commenters erupt
TLDR: Anna’s Archive asked AI companies to stop hammering its site, use its bulk download options, and donate instead. Commenters split fast: some praised the library like a student lifesaver, while others blasted the idea of charging for access to material it didn’t create and called AI looters.
The internet has found its latest deliciously weird drama: Anna’s Archive, a huge online library that says it wants to preserve human knowledge and share it with everyone, has posted an open letter basically saying, “Dear AI bots, please stop smashing into our anti-bot tests and use the proper download options instead.” Even better, it politely hints that if these robot systems have wallets—or can sweet-talk humans into opening theirs—they should maybe donate. Yes, really. The line about artificial intelligence being trained on Anna’s data and then being asked to give back had commenters absolutely cackling.
That joke-y tone landed hard. One reader laughed at the idea of an AI using “human persuasion” to send cash, while another went full fan-club mode, declaring Anna got them through university and saved them from buying textbooks. But the mood was far from all love hearts and pirate flags. The real comment-section fire came from people furious about the money angle. One called the enterprise donation option for fast, unlimited downloads “disgusting,” while another snapped that it was “pretty rich” to charge for access to material they say Anna doesn’t even own. Then came the broadside against AI itself: “LLMs are shameless thieves.”
So the actual story here isn’t just an online archive asking robots to behave. It’s a classic internet morality brawl: folk hero library or hypocritical middleman? noble preservation project or pay-to-skip line? And, naturally, everyone thinks they’re the sane one.
Key Points
- •Anna’s Archive says it is a non-profit focused on preserving human knowledge and culture and making it accessible to anyone, including robots.
- •The site says it uses CAPTCHAs to protect resources from automated overload but offers official bulk-download alternatives.
- •Anna’s Archive says its HTML and code are available in a GitLab repository, while metadata and files are available through torrents, especially `aa_derived_mirror_metadata`.
- •The post says torrents can be accessed programmatically through a JSON API, and donors can use an API for individual file access, though no search API exists yet.
- •Anna’s Archive asks LLMs to donate, offers enterprise SFTP access for large donors, and provides a Monero address for anonymous support.