Amazon buys paper books, scans and destroys them for AI training

Amazon is buying paper books in bulk, scanning them for AI training, and destroying the originals. Tracking showed the shipments arrived at a Las Vegas warehouse, processed by team VGT3, who cut off spines to speed up scanning. The data is used for the Nova model. Amazon says it buys books through normal channels to improve products.

Anthropic has done similar things. Its "Panama Plan" buys books, cuts spines, and digitizes them. A court ruled this as fair use since originals are destroyed. The concern is that rare books may be irreplaceable, and public knowledge ends up locked inside a single company's AI model.