Amazon has launched a new AI feature in the Kindle app that seamlessly answers questions about the book you’re reading, and confirmed that authors can’t opt out of the feature.
The company calls Ask This Book an “expert reading assistant” in its announcement, and says it’s able to answer questions about “plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements”, while it avoids spoilers by limiting its answers to the content of the pages you’ve read so far. It’s essentially an in-book chatbot, which can be accessed from the book menu or by highlighting a passage of text you want to ask about.
Amazon spokesperson Ale Iraheta said Publishers Lunch Answers are “non-shareable and non-copyable”, and are only available to readers who have purchased or rented the books. Iraheta also said that the feature is always on, noting that “there is no option for authors or publishers to select titles.”
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