The Kindle App Now Responds To Enquiries Regarding The Book You Are Currently Reading

The AI-driven 'Ask this Book' serves as a spoiler-free reading aide.

Image: Amazon

Regardless of whether one is perusing intricate 19th-century classics or contemporary thrillers, even the most proficient readers may occasionally become disoriented regarding the plot, including character identities and their interrelations.

Amazon is introducing a new feature in the Kindle iOS app that employs AI to provide consumers with information about the books in their Kindle library, regardless of authors' participation. The new function, titled Ask This Book, enables users to highlight any excerpt from a book they have purchased or borrowed on their iPhone's Kindle app and pose enquiries regarding their reading without navigating away from the page. For instance, it can provide readers with story elements or elucidate the identities of specific individuals.

Amazon could not specify the exact number of books for which the functionality is currently available, but stated that "thousands" of top English-language titles have been activated. The company announced that the feature will be implemented on physical Kindle devices and Android in 2026, although no specific date was provided.

Nonetheless, the technology behemoth has disclosed limited information regarding the operational mechanics of the new feature, and the tool may become contentious in the current contentious AI-copyright landscape. In a conversation with the publishing-industry journal PubLunch, noted by the book site Reactor, an Amazon representative stated: “To guarantee a uniform reading experience, the feature is perpetually activated, and authors or publishers cannot exclude their titles.”

Amazon allegedly did not respond to PubLunch's enquiries regarding the licensing rights utilised for the new tool, nor did they provide further data on the technical aspects of the service and the associated protections. For instance, it is ambiguous how Amazon intends to mitigate AI hallucinations, or if the material may be utilised for training massive language models.

If you wish to explore the functionality, navigate to Ask This Book in the in-book menu or highlight any passage while reading. You may select one of the proposed questions or input your own to receive responses from Amazon's new tool, and continue the dialogue with subsequent enquiries.