Amazon acquires and destroys rare books after digitizing them for AI training

Investigators discovered that Amazon acquires large quantities of rare books, scans their content to train artificial intelligence models, and then destroys the originals. An investigation conducted by 404 Media agency tracked the destination of a rare book using a hidden AirTag, revealing that the company operates a dedicated warehouse in Las Vegas with a specialized team that separates books from their spines and digitizes them. The practice raises concerns about knowledge preservation, since many of these books contain content never published online and free from contamination by AI-generated material. Although a court considered this practice as fair use and not infringing on copyrights, critics argue that potentially unique knowledge is being privatized and locked within proprietary AI models of technology companies, rather than remaining publicly accessible.