Amazon's AI Machine Devours Rare Books

Amazon's AI training facility in Las Vegas has been accused of destroying rare books to train its frontier models. An Airtag hidden in a rare book revealed that the facility, known as VGT3, is responsible for tearing books from their spines and scanning pages.

The investigation was conducted by 404 Media, which tracked an Airtag planted in a rare book to the Amazon AI training facility. The facility's logo features a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, indicating that the team may be tone-deaf to the backlash over destructive book scanning.

Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media's findings, but stated that it purchases books through commercial channels to improve its products and services. However, experts believe that Amazon needs a new source of original text for its AI models, which require a massive amount of unique training data to stay competitive with leading firms like Google.

Booksellers have long suspected that AI firms are buying up rare books and destroying them after scanning their content. The investigation suggests that this practice may be more widespread than initially thought, with Amazon being one of the main culprits.