This is merely the latest incarnation. We can imagine a slightly different process on a few fronts - AI companies pay to digitize books (still for their own purposes), but are prevented from destroying the physical copies and they have to openly shared the digitized results. We would view that situation much more favorably - perhaps even as ideal, right?
Those two dynamics could be backed up by court decisions or laws iff they weren't so plainly at odds with how copyright has been and is generally implemented and interpreted. For example, imagine them having to do this through some nonprofit library whose goals was preservation and dissemination. Instead, libraries have been sidelined as things that operate at the edge of the law rather than vital public institutions, whereas shredding books in secret is fully legally condoned.