A small tracking device hidden by a journalist inside a rare book led to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas, revealing that the company buys large quantities of printed books, removes their covers and cuts their bindings to speed up the optical scanning of pages. This process ends with the destruction of the original copies after converting their content into data used for training artificial intelligence models.

A book's journey revealed an undisclosed operation

According to an investigation published by 404 Media, a US website specializing in technical investigations, an AirTag was placed inside one of the books in a large order and tracked across the country until it reached Amazon’s warehouse in Las Vegas. Workers at the facility said their task is to receive shipments, cut the bindings of books, and scan them. The internal team known as VGT3 bears a logo of a dinosaur holding a book in its teeth. Meanwhile, Amazon stated that it purchases books through commercial channels to improve its products.

Old books provide models with material not available online
 

The value of these books lies in their containing old human texts that have not been digitally published and are not contaminated by AI-generated content. However, legally purchasing the copies does not end the debate over destroying rare books that may be difficult to replace. The tracking confirms the destination of a specific shipment and is supported by workers’ testimonies about the work style. But it alone does not determine the number of books destroyed or the cultural value of each title, which is an important difference between what was proven in the investigation and what needs further disclosure.