- Audible’s new “Style A Questions” feature gives us listeners to the new Pride & Prejudice -soundbook style an AI expert any questions about the book.
- You can ask about plot, grades or context without keeping playback playback.
- The beta feature is currently available for thousands of classic and public domain titles.
If you enjoy listening to the Drama of Regency Literature, but suddenly finds yourself confused about whose clipping Vid has bothered another character, Audible’s latest experiment has you covered.
The audiobook platform’s feature “Style A Question” rolls out in Beta in Tandem with a new Fully PLAY VERSION OF Pride and prejudicethat gives us listeners the opportunity to ask an AI expert about plot, characters and even historically context and references while the audiobook continues to play.
No need to pause, change apps or scroll through Reddit. The tool in the app that mixes AI-Generated Responses with Live Listening.
Simply press the “Ask a Question” button in the audible apps player while listening to a supported audiobook. Write your question, tap Send, and within moments you will receive a brief answer based on both the audiobook content and the external context. It is delivered quietly while the narrative continues.
Although the AI tool is shown on Jane Austen’s famous novel, arrives at many other public domain titles across the audible catalog. So you can be the mid-ball room scene, listen to passive-aggressive little talk and ask what year it happens, or confirm if this is the scene where Elizabeth changes her opinion with an answer given before Lady Catherine de Bourgh ends her verdict.
Audible says the tool is aimed at deepening immersion and not interrupting it. Therefore, the recitation does not stop when you send your question. Audible wants to keep you inside the novel’s velvet rope even when you need to look outside it for an answer.
AI comments
It may seem like a little fine -tuning, but the consequences of this change are wider than just a more flexible footnote. It is part of a growing tendency to make listening more interactive as a way to engage people in content that are not just podcasts. Audiber has always lived in a space between books and radio.
Unlike music, you usually don’t just let them play in the background. But unlike text, they are not searchable or foam-friendly. You cannot highlight a sentence or put a bookmark on a particularly well -developed phrase.
Ask a question offers a kind of on-demand-joint case, but one that is not intrusive. Classical literature is often delivered with its own time -traveling luggage: unknown slang, period -specific social rules and entire plot bows related to heritage laws that you have never heard of.
Being able to ask, “Why is it so big that he has no wealth?” Or “Is this marriage usually for the time being?” Can make a confusing story a relatable parable. And audible hopes that the AI-driven nature of the answers will make them better and faster by keeping it all within the app.
The new feature follows other recent AI experiments from Audible. The company has released an AI-driven audiobook discovery tool called stomach together with AI-driven narrative and translation tools.
There are legitimate philosophical questions about whether these kinds of tools devalue reading. Whether AI has us outsourcing the learning we need to do when we read old books, or the chance to come up with our own interpretations. That may be the case. But sometimes you just want to know who Charlotte Lucas married and why, before the next chapter begins.
