Investigation: Amazon is buying huge quantities of rare books, scanning them for AI, and destroying them; a tracked Biblio order went to its Las Vegas facility (Emanuel Maiberg/404 Media)
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
Amazon is buying large quantities of rare books, scanning them for AI training data, and then destroying them. A tracking device was placed in a shipment of rare books to determine its final destination, which was found to be an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada.
At the warehouse, employees receive massive shipments of printed books, cut off the bindings to quickly scan the books, and then destroy the printed material in the process. According to 404 Media, the Amazon team at this warehouse, called VGT3, has a logo featuring a dinosaur with a book in its hands.
An Amazon spokesperson stated that the company purchases books through commercial channels to "help develop and improve the products and services our customers use." The practice of destroying books for AI training data has been met with public opposition.
Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, 404 Media — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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