The Authors Guild has been communicating concerns to Amazon that its “Ask this Book” in-book chatbot infringes authors’ reserved rights: “The Guild is concerned that Ask this Book turns books into searchable, interactive products akin to enhanced ebooks or annotated editions—a new format for which rights should be specifically negotiated—and, given Amazon’s stronghold on ebook retail, it could usurp the burgeoning licensing market for interactive AI-enabled ebooks and audiobooks.” Amazon’s view is that the feature is “a natural language expansion of the search functionality that already exists in Kindle apps and for which no license is required.” Though it’s not […]
