Amazon, which started off selling books, is destroying rare texts to train AI
In Brief Posted: 9:38 AM PDT · August 17, 2026 Image Credits:Studio 642 / Getty Images Amanda Silberling Amazon, which started off selling books, is destroying rare texts to train AI Amazon is buying tons of rare books, cutting off their spines, and scanning them for AI training, according to 404…
In Brief Posted: 9:38 AM PDT · August 17, 2026 Image Credits:Studio 642 / Getty Images Amanda Silberling Amazon, which started off selling books, is destroying rare texts to train AI Amazon is buying tons of rare books, cutting off their spines, and scanning them for AI training, according to 404 Media, which placed a tracking device in a rare book that ultimately arrived at an Amazon facility in Las Vegas. The facility, known as VGT3, identifies itself with a symbol of a dinosaur holding a book in its claws. Amazon told 404 Media in a statement that it “purchases books through commercial channels to improve the products and services customers use.” Companies like Amazon need unfathomably large amounts of text to train their LLMs, which have already ingested what they can from the internet (and, in Anthropic’s case, illegally pirated books). Rare books, especially ones that are out of print or impossible to find on the internet, offer a new source of coveted training data. These texts are especially valuable since there’s no chance that anything published before 2022 was written by an LLM. When LLMs train on AI-generated text, they risk “model collapse,” which can occur when the quality of an LLM’s outputs degrade after ingesting too much AI-generated text. Topics AI, AI training, Amazon, In Brief October 13 – 15 San Francisco Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you.Save up to $300 today! REGISTER NOW Newsletters See More Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Related AI AI automation startup Relay shuts down, staff joins Google’s Chrome team Lucas Ropek 7 hours ago AI Groq raises $350M to fuel its pivot from AI chips to neocloud Rebecca Bellan 13 hours ago AI Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is ‘fundamentally a crisis of trust’ Anthony Ha 1 day ago Latest in AI In Brief Anthropic’s annualized revenue surges to $65B Marina Temkin 5 hours ago AI AI automation startup Relay shuts down, staff joins Google’s Chrome team Lucas Ropek 7 hours ago In Brief Amazon, which started off selling books, is destroying rare texts to train AI Amanda Silberling 12 hours agoSource: TechCrunch — Published — Category: Business