A dedicated division at an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas buys rare books, severs their bindings for digitization, and discards the physical copies to generate training data for artificial intelligence. An investigation by 404 Media used an Apple AirTag to track a shipment of 1,000 volumes to the facility, identified as VGT3, where workers remove spines to feed pages through high-speed scanners.
Technology firms target literature published before 2022 to ensure training sets contain human-authored text and avoid the synthetic data that can corrupt AI models. Independent booksellers reported a historical spike in sales of rare titles prior to the discovery of the VGT3 operation. Amazon stated it purchases books through commercial channels to improve products and services for customers.
Key sources
- SOURCE@novaramedia“The door of the warehouse has a sign with a logo featuring a dinosaur that appears ready to devour a book.”x.com
- SUPPORT@ns123abc“Amazon is buying so many books that booksellers noticed a “historical spike in sales””x.com
- SUPPORT@rainmaker1973“conceal an Apple AirTag within one volume included in an unnamed order of one thousand books”x.com