Amazon Uses Rare Books for AI Training

Amazon is reportedly purchasing rare books, removing their spines, and scanning them to use as training data for its AI models. This practice was uncovered by 404 Media, which tracked a rare book to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas. The facility, known as VGT3, is part of Amazon's efforts to gather unique text data, as traditional sources like the internet are becoming insufficient. Rare books provide a valuable resource because they are not AI-generated, reducing the risk of 'model collapse' in AI training. This highlights the challenges in sourcing diverse data for AI development.