Amazon stirs up a hornet’s nest with Ask This Book feature

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In spring 2025, Amazon Kindle rolled out AI-generated recaps of books, similar to recaps you watch before starting a new season of a show. They’re meant to help Kindle readers remember or catch up on previous installments of a series. This is a feature that neither publishers nor authors explicitly agreed to (at least as far as I know), and it can’t be disabled.

Now, Amazon is pushing the envelope further with a Kindle feature called Ask This Book (currently just in the US on iOS devices). Customers can ask questions about the Kindle book they’re reading and receive AI-generated answers—exactly as you might interact with an AI chatbot if it were able to reference the entire work. Amazon’s announcement says, “This feature serves as your expert reading assistant, instantly answering questions about plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements without disrupting your reading flow. All responses provide immediate, contextual, spoiler-free information.”

Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch published a lengthy piece on the new feature last week and could not get Amazon to elaborate on what rights they have to do this or how they will prevent hallucinations (i.e., made-up responses). Moreover, just like with the Recaps feature, publishers and authors are not able to opt out of Ask This Book. Cader writes (sub required), “Any rightsholders and creators are likely not to want an in-book chatbot without their specific review and approval (or at all), and we expect that message will be getting delivered to publishers and Amazon loud and clear in the ensuing days. And many people would deem the outputs of generative AI analyzing a particular copyrighted work as the very embodiment of a derivative work (or simply a direct infringement).” For more discussion, read Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware.

Copyeditor Nicole Klungle tested the Ask This Book feature on books in her Kindle library; see below for examples.

At left: cover of Anchor (Chromatic Mages Book 2) by D.N. Hoxa in the user’s Kindle Unlimited library, showing 27% reading progress. At right: screenshot of the user’s interaction with the Ask This Book feature, which begins with a disclaimer reading, “Answers are from your reading so far and don't contain spoilers.” The user asks, “I started this book a long time ago and took a break. Can you summarize it to this point?” Ask This Book responds, “The book follows Rosabel, a young woman who was turned "Mud" (magicless) after being attacked by her own team members Michael and Erid during an IDD mission. Her grandmother Madeline smuggles her into the Iris Roe—a dangerous magical competition-where Rosabel wins by draining a Rainbow with help from a mysterious player named Taland, regaining her magic in the process. After the game, she's brought before the Council, who decide to publicly claim she was never Mud and entered with their blessing, forcing her to lie to the press and the world. Now back working as an IDD agent, Rosabel is searching for Taland while dealing with the fallout of her victory— including a young Mud girl named Taylor who wants Rosabel to teach her how to win the Iris Roe too. The book ends with Rosabel and her colleague Cassie heading to the IDD Vault to retrieve evidence dice for an upcoming trial involving a man who used spelled dice to kill his parents.”
Ask This Book claims to reveal how Anchor ends, even though reading progress is at only 27 percent. (Reverse-spoiler alert: This is not how the book ends.)
At left: cover of The Unseelie King (Maze of Shadows Book 4) by Kathryn Ann Kingsley in the user’s Kindle Unlimited library, showing 38% reading progress. At right: screenshot of the user’s interaction with the Ask This Book feature, which begins with a disclaimer reading, “Answers are from your reading so far and don't contain spoilers.” The user asks, “Is Titania a good or bad character?” Ask This Book responds, “The book presents Titania as a complex character rather than simply good or bad. The selected text shows her in a moment of quiet contemplation at an altar, but the broader story reveals her actions are morally complicated—she killed Oberon (whom she loved for centuries), tortured Valroy, and attempted to kill Abigail, all while believing she was protecting her people from destruction. She genuinely cares about the Seelie and sees herself as saving Tir n'Aill, yet the book shows her causing immense suffering in pursuit of that goal. The text doesn't label her as good or bad; instead, it portrays her as someone driven by conviction but willing to commit terrible acts in the name of what she believes is necessary.”
For The Unseelie King, Ask This Book offers correct information, but it fails to provide context for Titania’s unintentional murder of Oberon, which occurred in a prior book in the series.

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