Amazon · Google · OpenAI · Ars Technica
Some booksellers agree that not every text needs to be saved, the BBC posted
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“It would be a much more significant problem if one like that were to be bought for destruction, having survived this long,” Walker said.
Key facts
- That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported
- Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings, only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically
- However, these works may still have “historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value” that AI firms overlooked, the bookseller who planted the Airtag told 404 Media
- On top of revealing that rare works that booksellers value are getting chewed up and swallowed by Amazon’s AI machine, 404 Media suggested that its investigation helped firm up another bookseller
Summary
For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings, only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically. “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” Amazon’s statement said. However, Amazon is developing what it considers frontier AI models, which require a massive amount of unique training data to stay competitive with leading firms like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic.