The AI plot to scan and destroy books (Lock and Code S07E19)
A Malwarebytes podcast details how Anthropic and Amazon scan and destroy books to train AI models.
On Malwarebytes’ Lock and Code podcast, host David Ruiz discusses reports that AI companies buy, scan, and destroy physical books for training data. Anthropic settled a copyright lawsuit covering more than 300,000 writers, including Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, for $1.5 billion in September 2025. Documents unsealed in January 2026 described an internal Anthropic effort, Project Panama, to destructively scan books. In August 2026, 404 Media reported that Amazon’s VGT3 operation near Las Vegas cuts apart and scans books.
- Anthropic paid $1.5 billion in September 2025 to settle author copyright claims.
- Unsealed filings described Project Panama as destructively scanning books worldwide.
- 404 Media tracked Amazon shipments to a Las Vegas book-scanning site.
- Books are cut apart and scanned, with no clear plan to resell them.
Full article411 words · extracted from malwarebytes.com · click to collapse
This week on the Lock and Code podcast…
If you want AI to tell you a story, it will. If you want that story to sound like one of your favorite authors, it can. And if you’re one of the authors that AI can imitate, you might be a little upset at what feels like theft.
In 2024, the authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued Anthropic, the creator of Claude, alleging that the company had wrongfully digested millions of copyrighted works—including some of their very own—to train its AI models. The lawsuit grew to include more than 300,000 writers, and in September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle the claims.
That headline-worthy payout, however, would eventually be paired with more startling news.
In January 2026, a district court judge unsealed thousands of documents related to the litigation. When The Washington Post investigated the documents, reporters found references to a secret project inside Anthropic called “Project Panama,” which Anthropic itself described as the company’s effort “to destructively scan all the books in the world.”
Anthropic is not alone in this.
On August 17, 404 Media co-founder and reporter Emanuel Maiberg revealed that Amazon is doing something similar inside a department it calls VGT3. By hiding an Apple AirTag in one book from a 1,000-book order, and then tracking the shipment across the country, 404 Media identified the book’s final destination to be a facility outside Las Vegas, where, according to employees, books are cut apart and scanned.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Maiberg about Amazon’s VGT3 operation and the likely commonplace practice of AI companies purchasing, scanning, and destroying books in an effort to build “frontier” models.
“They’re buying a book, they’re scanning it, they’re mulching the book, and then the digital version of the book exists behind this wall where we don’t even know if they plan to sell it, right? It’s like they might keep it behind a wall, and the only way we see it come out again from behind that wall is in the form of an answer from a chatbot.”
Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.
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