Last week we published a story that revealed
an Amazon warehouse where the company scans and destroys thousands of books for AI training data
. The following is an interview with one of the Amazon employees at this warehouse. We granted this employee anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The employee worked at Amazon’s VGT3 warehouse, which is housed in the same facility as LAS8, where Amazon operates its print-on-demand business. Both operations are part of a larger complex of Amazon facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada.
We discovered that VGT3 was used to destructively scan books for AI training data by placing a tracking device in a shipment of rare books that a bookseller suspected was being acquired by an anonymous AI company. We saw the shipment travel across the country before finally landing at VGT3. Online, Amazon employees who worked at VGT3 described the work of receiving shipments of books, cutting the spines off of them, and scanning the loose pages.
The Amazon employee I talked to described what that operation looks like from the warehouse floor.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
.
404 Media: What do you do when you get to work at VGT3?
Anonymous: We have to walk past everything to get to the back of the warehouse. That's where I first saw all the scanners, and I was really wondering what was going on. I remember I even asked someone what they were doing and they said they’re not sure even the people who work there know what they’re doing. Of course, once I got over there and started putting two and two together, I kind of understood. And you know, I think people who work there probably know what was going on over there, but probably just didn't want to talk about it.
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Do you work at a company that scans books for AI training? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal @emanuel.404. Otherwise, send me an email at emanuel@404media.co.
We also saw them c
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