The latest Kindle software update includes the limited roll out of the Kindle Recaps feature.
What is Kindle Recaps?
According to Amazon, the Kindle Recaps feature works similarly to TV show recaps in that it will supply a quick rundown of character arcs and storylines from previous books in a series.
Likely, Amazon believes this will increase book sales for a given series because it will catch up readers who may have had to wait months or even years for the next installment in a series to be released.
While this might seem a harmless and even welcome feature for readers, if you scratch the patina to find the fine print underneath, it’s not so benign after all.
Did you know Amazon has its own Gen-AI?
According to Amazon, “We use technology, including GenAI and Amazon moderators, to create short recaps of books that accurately reflect book content.”
Amazon Nova focuses on text generation. Nova Canvas generates images and Nova Reel generates videos.
First off, generative-AI is not, in fact, truly intelligent as the name implies. It doesn’t work like a human brain. It wont’ be able to tell if it’s releasing spoilers of stories, or how significant and egregious those spoilers are. And the human moderators won’t be able to tell either. They won’t have the time to read an entire series of books to double check that the AI isn’t giving too much away.
A significant chunk of authors are against generative-AI because in order to train these massive gen-AI databases, an unfathomable number of copyrighted works have to be added to them. This always occurs to copyright holders without their fore-knowledge, consent, or compensation. And the content that these databases generate directly and indirectly competes with the original works themselves.
In addition, across all such platforms generative-AI thus far outputs notoriously inaccurate information. And they don’t mention if there’s any way for author’s to correct the information it generates. This inaccurate information could anger or turn away potential or even long-time readers of a series.
“Oh fuck,” said Jenai May, Founder of RogueWriters.net, “I can’t even begin to convey how much can go wrong with this. The spoilers, the theft, and the betrayal. They still haven’t learned their lesson and failed to ask permission from the authors to feed their AI database.”
And R Ann Lochlann, author of the Child of the Erinyes series, added, “That’s what BLURBS are for. Authors put a lot of time and effort into their blurbs so that potential readers get a hint, a flavor, of what they can expect in the story without having any spoilers. The potential buyer can read the blurbs of all the books in the series and get their “recap” that way.
“Now here comes this blundering AI into the mix uninvited, and without any knowledge of what they’re writing. It’s going to be just like the human fingers in AI art. Authors don’t need Amazon barging through their own expertise.”
The bigger picture
The advent of generative-AI has made some authors stop writing and leave the business. Ditto graphic designers and artists whose work was caught up in langolier-style maws of gen-AI databases such as Open-AI, etc.
Some authors have started focusing their marketing and advertising efforts on other platforms, such as Nook, Kobo, and Apple Books. Still other authors are selling books directly from their own websites in order to cut out the middlemen altogether.
As Amazon begins to expand their generative-AI offerings in the publishing industry, it remains to be seen how fracturing features like this will be over the long-term.
Details on the Roll Out
As of 4-4-25, the Recaps feature is only available in the United States and only on Kindle devices. However, the next planned roll out is for the Kindle app for iOS devices.
In addition, Amazon’s press release mentions this feature is available on “thousands of English-language bestseller series books,” which implies that this is a limited roll-out—perhaps to test the waters and gauge what kind of uproar from authors this might generate. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, you’ll soon see authors mobilizing against this feature due to the above-mentioned issues. They’ll likely contact the Author’s Guild and ALLi for starters. And you may potentially hear of lawsuits by big name authors as this rolls out further.
