The AI Plot to Scan and Destroy Books
The AI Plot to Scan and Destroy Books 🚀
In 2024, 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. However, that headline-worthy payout was soon 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 these documents, reporters found references to a secret project inside Anthropic called “Project Panama,” which Anthropic described as the company’s effort “to destructively scan all the books in the world.”
Anthropic is not alone in this endeavor. 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.
This practice of AI companies purchasing, scanning, and destroying books is likely becoming commonplace in an effort to build “frontier” models. Emanuel Maiberg explained the process: “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. The only way we see it come out again from behind that wall is in the form of an answer from a chatbot.”
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