Rare Books Traced to Amazon AI Training Facility to Be Scanned and Destroyed

In brief

• An Apple AirTag hidden in a major book order led to an investigation that tracked the shipment to Amazon's VGT3 warehouse in Las Vegas.
• Workers there cut book spines so pages feed a scanner faster, destroying the printed book in the process.
• Amazon confirmed it "purchases books through commercial channels" and said the operation hadn't been reported before.

AI companies are scanning truckloads of books, sometimes rare ones, and often destroying them in the process to train their models—and now we have some idea of which companies and how they’re doing it.

Independent tech media publication 404 Media placed a tracking device inside a shipment of rare books and watched it travel to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas where the company scans and destroys printed books to train AI.

The investigation, published Monday, is the first to publicly pinpoint where bulk book purchases tied to AI training end up.

The final stop was Amazon's VGT3 team. Employees told the outlet all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books, then cut the bindings off so the pages feed a scanner more quickly. The book is destroyed in the process. The team's extremely fitting logo is a dinosaur clutching a book in its claws.