AirTag Tracking Exposes Amazon’s Secret Book Destruction for AI Training

A 404 Media investigation has confirmed that Amazon is buying rare books in bulk, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. Reporter Emanuel Maiberg placed an Apple AirTag in a rare book as part of a 1,000-book order and tracked it from California to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas known as LAS8. The facility houses a team called VGT3 that cuts book spines and scans pages. Amazon declined to confirm the AI training purpose but said it purchases books to improve customer products.

How the AirTag revealed Amazon’s operation

404 Media partnered with a bookseller who agreed to plant an AirTag in a book from a bulk order placed through Biblio. The book travelled from a California airport to a distribution warehouse near Kenosha, Wisconsin, then by truck through Grand Junction, Colorado, before arriving at Amazon’s Las Vegas facility. The AirTag placed the book at the north end of LAS8, in a section Amazon employees identified as VGT3, a separate operation with its own entrance and logo: a Tyrannosaurus rex holding an open book.

Why AI companies need rare books for training

Large language models learn by processing text collections, so training data quality matters significantly. AI companies prefer rare and antique books because they contain structured information that has already passed quality control, unlike internet text contaminated by AI-generated content. Booksellers across Australia, Europe, and the United Kingdom have reported a surge in anonymous bulk orders for obscure titles over the past year. Court documents have shown this is a common practice, with companies like Anthropic reportedly destroying millions of books.

Amazon’s denial and rival claims

Amazon declined to comment on specific findings but provided a statement saying it purchases books through commercial channels to develop and improve customer products. The company did not mention AI training. However, rivals like Anthropic and xAI have publicly stated they do not train on rare or antique books. Amazon employees at VGT3 told workers’ forums that the company had run low on books to scan earlier this year, suggesting urgent demand for training material.

What this means for investors and the AI race

The discovery highlights the hidden costs of the AI boom. Companies competing for frontier models need massive amounts of unique training data, creating pressure to acquire rare materials by any means. With Apple’s AirTag technology enabling this kind of tracking, supply chain transparency is becoming harder to avoid. For investors in AI companies and their suppliers, the ethical and legal risks around data sourcing are rising as scrutiny intensifies.

Final Thoughts

Amazon’s book-destruction operation confirms what booksellers have suspected for months: AI companies are systematically acquiring and destroying rare books for training data. The AirTag investigation provides concrete proof of a practice that competitors claim they avoid, raising questions about competitive advantage and regulatory risk in the AI sector.

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