Investigation: Amazon buys rare books, scans them for AI training, destroys them
A 404 Media investigation tracked a shipment of rare books via an Apple AirTag to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas, revealing that Amazon is buying large quantities of rare books, scanning them for AI training, and destroying them. The tracked order, placed through Biblio, was delivered to the VGT3 corner of the LAS8 Amazon facility, where the entrance features a dinosaur-with-book logo. The investigation follows earlier reports of anonymous, price-insensitive bulk book orders suspected to be for AI training.
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Techmeme
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media : 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 — 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.
Simon Willison
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility Excellent piece of reporting from 404 Media. For a while now there have been stories of book dealers receiving orders for large volumes of books from apparently price-insensitive anonymous customers, widely suspected to be companies looking to scan them for AI training (see my previous coverage of Anthropic's book scanning from June 2025.) 404 Media investigated with an AirTag! In July, one bookseller told me they received a very large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, one of these marketplaces. The seller agreed to put an Apple AirTag provided by 404 Media in one of the books included in this order so we could see where the book was going. And by extension, which company, AI or otherwise, was behind this massive order. The book ended up delivered to the VGT3 corner of the LAS8 Amazon facility in the north east of Las Vegas, where the entrance carried this on-the-nose logo of a dinosaur with a book! Ph
TechCrunch AIAmanda Silberling
Rare books are incredibly valuable for training LLMs, since these models have already trained on whatever's available online.