'Rare Books' Were Reportedly Destroyed By Amazon After Being Used To Train AI
Investigators say Amazon bought 1,000 rare books and destroyed them after scanning pages for AI training.
- An investigation tracked a rare book to Amazon's LAS8 warehouse in North Las Vegas, Nevada, where employees allegedly destroy physical copies after scanning pages for artificial intelligence training.
- Technology firms require vast quantities of human-created text to train language models, as researchers warn that relying on AI-generated content can cause "model collapse," reducing output quality over time.
- Workers at the VGT3 facility reportedly remove book bindings to process loose pages through high-speed scanners, while Amazon claims it purchases books through commercial channels to improve products, without confirming destruction.
- Anthropic faced similar legal challenges regarding its Claude language model, reaching a settlement of up to $1.5 billion in damages over allegations involving pirated books for artificial intelligence training.
- Booksellers and archivists fear rare works could be lost as the copyright debate intensifies, though IBTimes UK cannot independently verify the claims against Amazon's warehouse operations.
21 Articles
21 Articles
Amazon says it buys books in bulk to 'improve products'
Amazon has said it buys books through commercial channels to develop its products after an investigation traced a bulk order of rare books to a facility where workers reportedly destroy and scan physical copies. “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson told City AM. Last week, an investigation by 404 Media tracked an order of around 1,000 …
American and Chinese companies producing artificial intelligence models are allegedly buying up books en masse from foreign secondhand bookstores. These books are then destroyed to train their tools. "Firstly, we lose books, and secondly, these companies don't share them in any way; they only create value for their shareholders," said Professor Dariusz Jemielniak on the "Dzień na świata" program on TVN24 BiS.
In order to train its d的IA systems, Amazon would buy hundreds of pounds, which would be destroyed during a scanning process. ...
Report: Amazon scans books for AI data, destroys them at North Las Vegas facility
Amazon, which operates 19 facilities in Southern Nevada, scans and shreds books at its LAS8 warehouse in North Las Vegas, according to a 404 Media investigation that tracked an order of about 1,000 books to the facility.
Podcast: Amazon is Destroying Rare Books to Train AI
We start this week with Emanuel’s big story about Amazon buying, and destroying, masses of books to train AI. After the break we talk about a couple of wild cases where people are using AI. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Meta’s new smart glasses patent and research into how perverts are using them. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus con…
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