We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

Book dealers have recently reported receiving unusually large orders for hundreds or thousands of books from anonymous, price-insensitive buyers. There is widespread suspicion that technology companies are purchasing these volumes to scan them for artificial intelligence training data.

To investigate who is behind these purchases, journalists at 404 Media worked with a bookseller who received a bulk order of about one thousand books through the online marketplace Biblio in July. With the seller's permission, the reporters placed an Apple AirTag inside one of the books to track its final destination.

The tracked book was delivered to a specific area known as VGT3 within an Amazon facility located in northeast Las Vegas. Online forum discussions among Amazon employees confirmed that this particular section of the facility is used to destructively scan large volumes of books.

This tracking discovery provides concrete physical evidence linking mysterious bulk book purchases directly to Amazon infrastructure dedicated to mass scanning operations, shedding light on the methods used to gather data for artificial intelligence development.