Rare Book Shipment Tracked to an Amazon AI Training Facility
The tracking confirms Amazon is physically destroying rare books to feed its AI training pipeline, a practice the used book industry already fears after Anthropic's similar bulk digitization.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
An investigation by 404 Media tracked a bulk order of roughly 1,000 used books, including rare titles, to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas. There, a team called VGT3 cuts off spines and scans pages for AI training data. Amazon confirmed it buys books through commercial channels to improve its products.
404 Media embedded an Apple AirTag in one of about 1,000 books ordered from a used book seller through Biblio in July 2026. The device traveled across the United States and stopped at an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, where a team called VGT3 receives printed books, cuts off their spines, and scans the pages.
The process is irreversible. Cut books cannot be restored, so their original physical form is lost. The seller noted that even books with little demand do not lose their historical value.
Amazon is not alone in this method. Anthropic previously purchased millions of physical books, cut and scanned them, and discarded the originals, raising concerns that rare books could disappear. An Amazon spokesperson said the company buys books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services customers use.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.