Amazon Kindle Rolls Out AI-Powered Recap Feature

If you’re a forgetful reader, or if you’re picking up a book series that you haven’t touched in a long time, Amazon is rolling out a new feature for Kindle that might come in handy.

“Recaps” will give users short summaries of what has happened up until now in a book series, so you know what’s going on before diving into the current title. Amazon compared it to the “Previously on…” segment before a TV show.

Amazon didn’t touch on how the recaps were created in the original announcement, but a spokesperson later confirmed to News that they were produced by generative AI. Customers who want to use Recaps will need to first install the latest Kindle software updates. Otherwise, they will need to wait for an over-the-air update scheduled for within the next few weeks.

To determine whether a series has Recaps available, look for the “View Recaps” button on the series page in your Kindle Library or the “View Recaps” item within the series grouping’s three-dot menu.

The feature is currently only available for users with a physical Kindle device, though Amazon says they will roll out the feature for iOS “shortly.” The Kindle maker didn’t mention when we could expect the tool to come to Android.

Amazon didn’t provide a list of supported titles, but said it is available “for best-selling English-language book series,” including genres like epic fantasy and mystery thrillers, as well as “trending titles and longtime favorites.”

Amazon introduced similar AI-powered recap features last year on its other platforms. In November, it began rolling out X-Ray Recaps to Fire TV customers, which use AI to generate text summaries of episodes and seasons—powered by Amazon Bedrock models and custom AI models trained on Amazon SageMaker.

At launch, X-Ray Recaps were available for Amazon MGM Studios original series such as Daisy Jones & the Six, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Wheel of Time, Upload and The Boys.

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