{
  "id": 1579977,
  "title": "We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-1579977",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-17T17:54:19.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Lobsters",
    "slug": "lobsters",
    "url": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/17/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-tra/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In a recent investigation by 404 Media, a shipment of rare books was tracked and found to have ended at an Amazon AI training facility. For some time, there have been reports of book dealers receiving large orders from anonymous customers, believed to be companies seeking to scan the books for AI training. One bookseller shared a large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, a marketplace known for such activities. To track the shipment, a 404 Media team provided an Apple AirTag to the seller, allowing them to monitor the book's journey. The book was delivered to the VGT3 corner of the LAS8 Amazon facility in the northeast of Las Vegas. This facility prominently displayed a logo of a dinosaur holding a book at its entrance. Discussions on online forums between Amazon workers confirmed that VGT3 is involved in destructively scanning large volumes of books.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 4,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "404 Media",
        "title": "We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training",
        "published": "2026-08-17T13:16:09.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Simon Willison",
        "title": "We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-1505442",
        "published": "2026-08-17T15:21:29.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Slashdot",
        "title": "Tracking Rare Books Leads to an Amazon AI Training Facility",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/tracking-rare-books-leads-to-an-amazon-ai-training-facility",
        "published": "2026-08-17T17:00:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}