Turn off/Block AI features

[DiapDealer]

And dogmatically insisting that tech jargon must stay semantically "correct" ignores decades of it doing the exact opposite. Please get past this. There's only so much old-man-telling-the-kids-to-stay-off-their-lawn that the world can take.

[Quoth]

So sad

https://github.com/grimthorpe/clbre

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'm not updating till this is scrapped. It's a thin end of a wedge and encouraging people to use these over-hyped LLMs, even though off by default. Destroying the planet, impairing mental health and filling up with plausible nonsense, or illegally copied sources and without accurate citations.

There are "AI" that works, but Generative AI / LLM isn't one of them.

It's not going to be scrapped, so good bye, I guess. You are more than welcome to not use AI if you don't want to. calibre very nicely makes that easy for you by having it off by default to the extent that the AI code is not even loaded unless you enable it. What you DO NOT get to do is try to make that choice for other people.

[rowe]

Chanting in every related thread that "LLMs are just statistics" or "not real AI" is like arguing a submarine doesn't swim. It is technically true, but functionally irrelevant. Whether you call it AI or pattern matching does not negate its utility for those who choose to use it.

People are perfectly entitled to personal opinions that AI is negative. But luddites are not entitled to force their one sided opinions onto the entire user base by gatekeeping software features.

If you do not want it, do not enable/use it. The feature effectively does not exist for you, and its presence does you no harm. Insisting on its removal serves no practical purpose other than restricting user choice.

[farmo]

"Calibre adding "AI conversations" with books fundamentally alters the relationship that users, presumably readers!, have with the works in their libraries. ... Here, Calibre, in one release, went from a tool readers can use to, well, read, to a tool that fundamentally views books as textureless content, no more than the information contained within them. Anything about presentation, form, perspective, voice, is irrelevant to that view. Books are no longer art, they're ingots of tin to be melted down. ... But the question remains: what relationship should a library management tool have with the author and the reader? How should or shouldn't it facilitate the creation of and participation in art?" (xgranade at mastodon - see their full thread here.

I see that as valid objections to the newly introduced features - in addition to natural and developer resources waste, as pointed out by others. I'm using and loving Calibre since 2013, and have for now updated to the latest "pre-AI" version 8.15

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

So sad

https://github.com/grimthorpe/clbre

Seems rather beautiful to me. Open-source working the way open-source was intended. A 3 second fork and you're on your way to having exactly what you want. It's a win-win in my book.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by farmo

"Calibre adding "AI conversations" with books fundamentally alters the relationship that users, presumably readers!, have with the works in their libraries. ... Here, Calibre, in one release, went from a tool readers can use to, well, read, to a tool that fundamentally views books as textureless content, no more than the information contained within them.

Um... no, it doesn't change any relationship I have with the books in my library. I read them, edit their metadata and formatting (probably the latter is also an anathema to you - how dare I mess with the author's/publisher's vision about what their books should look like!), sort them into various categories, and if needed, ask the AI to remind me of something in a book I have already read a while ago. I don't ask the AI to summarize unread books to me. And yes, I still reread many of my books.

You're presumably thinking that people will now stop reading and only ask the AI to summarize. That's highly unlikely. Those who enjoy reading (I'm guessing the vast majority of calibre users) won't stop enjoying it just because LLMs are now integrated in calibre. And if there are any calibre users who, for some reason, don't enjoy reading, adding LLM integration won't change that either.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by farmo

"Calibre adding "AI conversations" with books fundamentally alters the relationship that users, presumably readers!, have with the works in their libraries.

This seems a bit dramatic to me. I hate genAI and don't use it. My relationship with the books I have in Calibre is completely unchanged because I haven't, and won't, configure any AI tools.

[farmo]

I too suppose that the vast majority of readers will continue reading as before. However, why should Calibre offer LLM use on books without their authors - oftenly already robbed by large LLM providers - have any saying -- authors who may sharply disagree with their creative, scientific or artistic work be flattened by LLMs?

Authors can finally not control how their books are enjoyed by readers or just used as input to some algorithmic processing - but Calibre could take a stance not supporting the latter.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by Quoth

So sad

https://github.com/grimthorpe/clbre

FWIW, according to its commit history, there are no commits in that repo to remove any AI related code.

So no idea what that "fork" accomplished other than modifying the readme!

And good luck to anyone that tries to keep up with the speed and intensity of code fixes and updates that Kovid generates!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by KevinH

FWIW, according to its commit history, there are no commits in that repo to remove any AI related code.

So no idea what that "fork" accomplished other than modifying the readme!

And good luck to anyone that tries to keep up with the speed and intensity of code fixes and updates that Kovid generates!

Hilarious.

[DiapDealer]

What's hilarious is someone forking the codebase in order to remove code that will never be used unless you choose to enable it. Hilarious and pointless drama if you ask me.

[Terisa de morgan]

I must confess that I wouldn't know that calibre has AI options unless I would read threads like this. Yes, I saw information about it at the changelog... but I gave it no attention as it is no something I'm interested on (although I guess there are people who like it).

[JSWolf]

What option(s) is/are there to keep the AI turned off?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What option(s) is/are there to keep the AI turned off?

You mean other than needing to explicitly enable it to use it?