Amazon Scrubs Rare Books to Train Its AI — and Destroys Them in the Process

Amazon

A report by 404 Media shows Amazon now runs a book-scanning operation in which it physically destroys printed books after digitizing them for AI model training. Journalists placed an AirTag inside a shipment of rare books and tracked it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, the home of an internal team (codenamed VGT3, marked by a T-rex-with-a-book logo). Workers at the facility reportedly cut the spines off books to speed up scanning, destroying the original copies in the process.

Amazon confirmed it buys books through commercial channels to improve its products and uses the scanned text to train its Nova family of models. Booksellers involved in the resale market suspect AI companies are systematically working through books by ISBN — printed texts are especially prized because many predate 2022 and therefore contain no AI-generated noise. Amazon is not alone: a separate authors’ lawsuit revealed Anthropic’s similar “Project Panama,” where the company bought print books off marketplaces, removed their spines, and digitized them. In that case a judge ruled the scanning qualified as fair use in part because the physical originals were destroyed rather than copied and resold.

The practice is drawing criticism because it can permanently remove irreplaceable printed works from circulation and locks their knowledge inside proprietary, closed AI models.

What this means for sellers and operators

  • Watch content-risk optics, not just policy text. Scrutiny over how Amazon sources AI training data is growing; sellers who surface or rely on Amazon’s AI product copy should expect more attention to provenance and originality of listings.
  • Intellectual-property exposure. If you create original listing content (photos, copy, product literature), be aware Amazon’s AI tools may absorb and reuse it. Review your seller agreement’s IP and content-use clauses and keep records of original assets.
  • No action required on your storefront today — but monitor Amazon Seller Central announcements and newsroom statements for any policy changes on AI content, since enforcement and sourcing practices are likely to tighten.

Sources

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