00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: AI is promising to transform the way we read books, but will it be for the better?
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And Google is transforming Gemini into a one-stop shop for all your purchases, projects, and pictures.
00:11 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:12 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:21 – Mishaal Rahman: So Amazon recently rolled out a new AI assistant in the Kindle app for iOS that basically allows you to ask it questions about what you’re reading. And we found evidence that Google may be following suit with its own Gemini assistant chatbot in the Google Play Books app. But should people really be reading books with an AI assistant at their side?
00:39 – C. Scott Brown: And should we be preparing for a future where apps like Gemini become super apps? Because it sure seems like Google wants us to spend more and more time in the app.
Google also wants us to spend more time digging through our Google Account settings and more time chatting with Gemini, even if it’s not inside the Gemini app. The company is testing a new Gemini-powered chatbot for answering your burning questions about your own Google account.
01:06 – Mishaal Rahman: Man, Gemini, Gemini, Gemini. Seems like this week is all about Gemini. And you’re not going to stop hearing about AI because the holidays are around the corner and right after that CES kicks off and it’s going to be chock full of Gemini news.
And speaking of CES, because of the holidays and because of CES, there won’t be another episode of the Authority Insights Podcast for a couple of weeks. Next week is the Christmas holiday, so both Scott and myself will be out. And then the week after that, New Year’s week, we’re just not going to have enough time to actually record that week as well. CES, we kind of doubt we’re going to be able to get something out during then, but we’ll have to wait and see, but we’ll keep you updated if you want to find out when the next episode will be airing. But for now, let’s get back to the main stories. The trio of Gemini news.
Starting with the news that Google is bringing Gemini into the Google Play Books app. So for those who don’t know, we have discovered evidence within the latest version of the Google Play Books app suggesting that Google is working on a new Ask Gemini feature. And we’ve discovered evidence that Google will be introducing this Ask Gemini button within the selection menu whenever you highlight text inside of a book that you’re reading. And it’ll be existing sitting alongside the add note button, the translate button, the copy button, the define button. And currently, it’s not functional yet, but I think it’s pretty obvious what this is going to do. You highlight a block of text, a couple of paragraphs, a couple of words, you tap Ask Gemini, and then it’ll ask the AI assistant to explain what that block of text means or maybe summarize it or something else. Now, of course, this is a work in progress so we don’t know exactly whether or not this will open like an in-app interface or if this will open in the dedicated Gemini app. But either way, it’s still going to be interfacing with an AI chatbot, whatever you’re asking about whatever book you’re reading, whatever you want to ask it. And we can’t help but notice that this is coming very shortly after Amazon announced its own version of the feature called Ask This Book which is currently available in the iOS version of the Kindle app. And that feature allows you to basically just ask questions about whatever you’re reading, characters, or the plot or something and get spoiler-free answers to your questions based on how far you are currently in the book which is a pretty significant kind of way that this is structured. Because you don’t want to be asking a question about you’re reading the Harry Potter novels and you ask, is Snape a bad guy? And then it tells you the most infamous spoiler in history, right? You don’t want it to accidentally reveal that to you in case you haven’t already heard that spoiler by now. So I think I have mixed feelings about this idea. But like, what do you think Scott? What do you think of this idea of adding an AI chatbot to your book?
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