We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

A shipment of rare books was recently tracked by 404 Media and ended up at an Amazon AI training facility. The story reveals a longstanding suspicion that large anonymous orders of books are actually from companies seeking to scan them for AI training purposes. In July, a bookseller shared that they received a large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, one of the marketplaces where these anonymous orders often originate.

To track the destination of this particular order, 404 Media inserted an Apple AirTag into one of the books. With this tracking device in place, the path of the books became clear - they were delivered to a corner of the LAS8 Amazon facility in the northeast of Las Vegas. The facility's entrance prominently featured a sign with a dinosaur wearing a book, hinting at the true nature of the facility's operations.

Online discussions among Amazon employees confirmed that VGT3, the specific section of the facility where the books arrived, is involved in destructive scanning of large volumes of books. Simon Willison, a contributor to the 404 Media report, shared a link post on August 17, 2026, shedding light on this secretive aspect of Amazon's business.