For readers immersed in a story who need a quick reminder about a character's identity midway through, Amazon's latest Kindle innovation aims to provide assistance directly on the device. Known as Ask this Book, this capability debuted at the company's September hardware showcase and has now rolled out to American customers via the Kindle application for iOS devices.
Amazon indicates that the tool is accessible across numerous top-selling English e-books on Kindle and restricts its responses to content preceding the reader's progress to prevent plot giveaways. Users activate it by selecting text from purchased or lent titles and posing inquiries regarding storylines, figures, or essential elements, prompting the artificial intelligence to supply prompt, relevant, and spoiler-avoiding explanations. Additional queries can follow to elaborate further.
Although Ask this Book could prove useful for certain e-book enthusiasts, it raises significant concerns among writers and publishing houses. Addressing inquiries from Publishers Lunch, an industry bulletin, an Amazon representative explained that the function operates continuously to maintain uniform user experiences, with no mechanism allowing creators or imprints to exclude their works. Similar artificial intelligence firms are encountering legal challenges over alleged violations of intellectual property rights, including a fresh case from The New York Times and Chicago Tribune against Perplexity for incorporating protected materials into the training of its language models.
Regarding Ask this Book, Amazon intends to broaden its reach past the iOS platform, bringing it to e-readers and the Android version of the app in the coming year. In addition, the company has added Recaps to its hardware and iOS software for serialized titles, offering summaries akin to episode previews in television programming. That said, Amazon pulled back its artificially produced Video Recaps not long ago, suggesting caution when verifying details from this summary option.