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Amazon Worker Details Book Scanning and Destruction for AI Training

An Amazon worker describes books being sliced, scanned and destroyed for AI training in Las Vegas, saying it cuts available copies.

AI News Feed · 2026-08-27 08:29

The publication first reported last week that Amazon operates a warehouse where books are processed for AI training. In the follow-up interview, the employee, who worked at Amazon's VGT3 warehouse in the same building as the LAS8 print-on-demand operation, described the process in detail. Both operations are part of a larger Amazon complex in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The employee said the spines of books are sliced off by machines that workers operate at small workstations. "It's really safe because it has a little cover and it has a little area where you slide the book into, remove your fingers from the area, and then you press a button, and it just comes down and slices it," the employee told 404 Media. After the spines are removed, pages are stacked on library-style carts with cardboard separators to keep different books apart.

Scanned pages were then tossed into a shuttle, according to the employee. "We were walking by and we went over to one of the shuttles and looked into it because we could tell they were throwing the old books in it or the cut books in it, and it's just a bunch of loose paper like just sheets thrown in there."

The employee said workers were initially told the books were destined for Kindles, but they doubted that explanation because of publication rights, copyright and related issues. "Then I saw it was for AI," the employee said.

The employee criticized the destruction of the books, saying they wished they could take them. "There's so much knowledge and so much stuff in them and some of them look like they might be rare, and I've heard that they order rare books, and that's why I say some of these are so obscure," the employee said. "I definitely don't like the idea that they can't be reused or anything like that afterwards. They're reducing the amount of available copies for other people."