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Amazon's Genius New Kindle Feature Might Be the Best Use of AI I've Seen

I'm finally ready to take the e-reader plunge.

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David Watsky Managing Editor / Home and Kitchen
David lives in Brooklyn where he's spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. David earned his BA from Northeastern and has toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now he's likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or tinkering with a toaster. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week.
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The forgetful reader has a secret weapon now with Kindle's Story So Far feature.

 Amazon

If you're the type of reader who picks up their book after a few days off (or even one) and thinks, "What in the world is happening here?" Amazon's new Kindle Scribe models, announced Tuesday, have an AI feature that solves the problem. 

Story So Far, as the feature is called, supplies forgetful readers with a quick synopsis of what they've last read as soon as they pick the story up again. It's such a brilliant and straightforward use of AI that it has this paper book purist ready to move on to an e-reader. 

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A rep for the brand at Amazon's device event in New York told us that there are absolutely no spoilers, just a fast summary to get you back up to speed. No more flipping backwards to remember who betrayed whom or what city the protagonist escaped to. The synopses are available for Kindle books only and are "about half-page to a full-page in length." 

Among updates to the Scribe is another AI feature meant to give deeper insights into short stories, novels or nonfiction works. Ask This Book lets you highlight any passage of text while reading a book and get spoiler-free answers to questions about things like a character's motive or the significance of a scene.

Kindle's latest Scribe retails for $500 and is available for preorder now.

See at Amazon