For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon.
On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.
Amazon deflects
Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings, only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically.
“Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” Amazon’s statement said.
However, Amazon is developing what it considers frontier AI models, which require a massive amount of unique training data to stay competitive with leading firms like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic. Right now, firms carefully guard their training data to avoid losing an edge. And training models on text from rare books that are difficult to find would seemingly offer an advantage for Amazon, especially since rivals like Anthropic and xAI have publicly stated that they are not training on rare or antique books.
Further, it seems that Amazon needed a new source of original text. 404 Media flagged discussions in online forums where VGT3 workers suggested that earlier this year Amazon had run low on books to scan. The shortage was so alarming that they worried the warehouse might shut down if Amazon couldn’t find more books to scan. At one point, the supply completely ran out, workers said. But the facility is still operational, 404 Media reported. And it’s now confirmed that bulk orders of rare books delivered there are systematically destroyed by this crew.
Many book lovers are horrified by destructive book-scanning (since there is an alternative) , with one staunch critic, Michael Burry, even reportedly labeling the practice to be “evil incarnate.” However, Amazon workers reported in forums that they consider the gig to be a “nice” opportunity for those drawn to a humdrum job with flexible hours.
Debate rages over rare books
On top of revealing that rare works that booksellers value are getting chewed up and swallowed by Amazon’s AI machine, 404 Media suggested that its investigation helped firm up another bookseller theory about why AI firms might be ordering certain rare books and not others.
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