ChainThink reports that, on August 18, according to an investigation by 404 Media, Amazon is purchasing physical books through commercial channels, disbinding them, scanning the pages for AI training, and then destroying the original books.
The investigation tracked an order of approximately 1,000 books.
404 Media partnered with a bookseller who fulfilled orders through the online marketplace for used and rare books, Biblio, and placed an AirTag inside one of the books, ultimately tracking it to Amazon’s LAS8 warehouse in North Las Vegas.
The report states that the team named VGT3, located in the warehouse, is responsible for scanning books. An Amazon spokesperson told Inc. that the company purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services used by customers.
Amazon did not respond to questions regarding the total number of books purchased, the project's start date, which products the scanned content will be used for, or whether rare or scarce editions were filtered out before destruction.