I have just found out that Amazon have begun the rollout of a new Kindle feature, called Ask This Book. It lets Kindle readers ask questions about the book they’re reading. They get AI-generated answers straight away, without them having to leave the book, so they stay in the flow of the story.

As far as I know, it’s only available in the Kindle iOS app for U.S. customers. But there are plans to expand across other Kindle and Android devices later this year.

So, if you lose your way with a plot twist, or forget who a character is, you can now ask technology and it will tell you.

So far, so good, right?

Not really.

Why this new feature really rips my knitting, as we might say in the Scottish Highlands, is that the reader doesn’t get sent straight back to the page they were reading. Instead, they are offered ‘explanations.’ And these explanations are entirely without the author’s involvement, permission, or ability to intervene.

And that is why it’s a problem.

The Ask This Book, Program Doesn’t Allow Me A Say In How My Book Is Depicted

As an author, I can’t opt out of this feature. Nor can I ask what information is created (and given to my readers) about my own book.

Writer groups such as The Authors Guild have argued that the Ask This Book feature effectively turns books into a different kind of product, more akin to enhanced or annotated editions. And they ask, shouldn’t such changes necessitate a renewal of terms.

Here’s an example from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.

Readers can ask additional questions. And this is where we end up going down a wormhole into another thing altogether. Because when the AI is generating explanations and commentary about a copyrighted work, we’re no longer dealing only with the original text. We’re also dealing with a new version of the text that’s filtered and shaped by a machine.

I found out about this thanks to an excellent article on kindlepreneur.com which I have paraphrased for this blog post.

When the founder of Kindlepreneur, Dave Chesson, as asked for his views on this new development, he didn’t mince his words: ‘this should be illegal.’

So far, the Ask This Book feature doesn’t seem to be running away with itself, in terms of spoilers or just making stuff up. But it is still very new.

And I just don’t like it. I don’t want a generic AI program shaping the narrative of my unique stories that I sweated over, often for years.

And so, the question remains – should Amazon be allowed to do this.

We all know what happens with technology when new features become ‘normalised’ and then added to, over time.

Where will it end…?

Take care and have a wonderful Burns Night wherever you happen to be in the world.

Alex x