Amazon is acquiring rare books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.

People have known for a while that AI companies are buying books, scanning them in, and destroying them in the process. Recently, unusually large anonymous purchases of *rare* books have been detected. AI companies at work? Now there's evidence! "404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination. That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process." https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/ (1/n)

Smoking gun of books going to AI training found - 404 tracked one shipment to an Amazon AI training facility https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/ https://archive.is/70Hun

"Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination. That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands. “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson told me in a statement. The world’s AI companies are constantly looking for, and spending extreme resources to locate, more material to train their AI models. With books, that sometimes means destroying them in the process, something that large parts of the public have spoken up against, and which we can now confirm Amazon is doing." https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/ #AI #Books #BookScanning #Amazon #GenerativeAI #AITraining #LLMs #BigTech

Investigation: Amazon is buying huge quantities of rare books, scanning them for AI, and destroying them; a tracked Biblio order went to its Las Vegas facility (Emanuel Maiberg/404 Media) https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/ http://www.techmeme.com/260817/p20#a260817p20

“Amazon, once an online bookseller, is destroying rare books to train AI models” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/amazon-once-an-online-bookseller-is-destroying-rare-books-to-train-ai-models/ar-AA2aj7F9

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

"With books, that sometimes means destroying them in the process, something that large parts of the public have spoken up against, and which we can now confirm Amazon is doing." https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/ https://archive.is/rs4aE #ai #books #datacenters #rarebooks #tech #technology #aitraining #generativeAI #amazon #culture #destructiveScanning

Amazon is scanning and destroying rare books for AI https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

Amazon - which started out as a bookstore - is now destroying books so they can train computers to replace authors. https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/