404 Media’s investigation found that a large order of books placed through an online marketplace ended up at an Amazon facility near Las Vegas, highlighting concerns that bulk physical book purchases are being routed to sites that digitize material for AI training.
What happened?
A bookseller reported receiving an unusually large order of roughly 1,000 books via Biblio, a marketplace for used and rare books. The seller agreed to let 404 Media place an Apple AirTag inside one of the ordered books to trace where the volume would be delivered and thereby identify the recipient organization.
The AirTag’s signal showed the package was delivered to the VGT3 corner of Amazon’s LAS8 facility in northeast Las Vegas. Photographs from the investigation show a dinosaur-with-a-book logo at the entrance to that part of the site.
Why this matters
404 Media says online forum posts by Amazon employees indicate that the VGT3 unit performs destructive scanning of large numbers of books — meaning the physical volumes are disassembled and digitized rather than preserved in their original form. Such activity raises questions around copyright, consent, and the ethics of acquiring print material for training AI models.
Context
This investigation fits into a broader pattern reported in recent years of companies or anonymous buyers purchasing large quantities of printed books, allegedly to create training datasets for AI. The article references prior reporting about Anthropic’s book-scanning activities, noting coverage from June 2025.
Conclusion
By following an AirTag placed in a bulk rare-book order, 404 Media established a direct trail to an Amazon facility where employees report large-scale digitization of books. The finding adds to ongoing debates over transparency, legal compliance, and ethical sourcing of training data for artificial intelligence.
