Amazon is buying rare books, cutting off their spines, and scanning them for AI training, according to a 404 Media investigation summarized by TechCrunch. The investigation placed a tracking device in a rare book that eventually arrived at an Amazon facility in Las Vegas.
Amazon told 404 Media that it purchases books through commercial channels to improve products and services customers use. The appeal of rare and out-of-print books is clear for large language model training: they contain text that may not already be online and, if published before the recent AI boom, is unlikely to be synthetic model output.
The story highlights a growing tension between data hunger and cultural preservation. Destructive scanning can turn scarce physical works into training material while reducing access to the original artifacts. It also raises a separate question from copyright: even when books are bought commercially, communities may still object to rare materials being consumed as raw input for AI systems.