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.
- Organizations
- AnthropicAmazonMalwarebytes404 Media
- Countries
- United States
- AI models
- Claude
From the original article
2 min read at malwarebytes.com
This week on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Emanuel Maiberg about Amazon's effort to scan and destroy rare books for AI training.
By @malwarebytes · malwarebytes.com
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