Using A.I. for eBook summaries

haertig · 05-05-2026, 07:58 PM

I am not an A.I. user and I don't know much about its capabilities. I was wondering about A.I. and eBooks. Has it advanced to the point where you can give it an EPUB and it will come up with a plot summary of the book (I'm talking about fiction books)? That would be useful to me when going to read a new book in a series where I haven't read earlier books in the series in a long time. In other words, summarize books I've already read so I can catch myself up on important details before continuing the rest of the series.

If this kind of A.I. summary is possible today and it's decent enough quality to actually be useful (doesn't miss important stuff and doesn't hallucinate stuff that didn't happen in the book), how do you access it, what does it cost, pluses/minuses of using it, any other details about it?

DNSB · 05-05-2026, 08:25 PM

One acquaintance of mine was trying to use AI to generate summaries. It wasn't that hard to set up but the main issue was that about 20% of the time, the AI hallucinated while creating the summary. This ended up requiring a human who was familiar with the books had to review each summary to remove the crud. They mentioned one example where the AI created summaries of the books in the Chronicle of Narnia had several with Aslan as the villain.

The project was finally dropped since the need to review the summaries made the process take more man hours than having the humans write the summaries.

JSWolf · 05-06-2026, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

One acquaintance of mine was trying to use AI to generate summaries. It wasn't that hard to set up but the main issue was that about 20% of the time, the AI hallucinated while creating the summary. This ended up requiring a human who was familiar with the books had to review each summary to remove the crud. They mentioned one example where the AI created summaries of the books in the Chronicle of Narnia had several with Aslan as the villain.

The project was finally dropped since the need to review the summaries made the process take more man hours than having the humans write the summaries.

That's why I don't use downloaded metadata.

ownedbycats · 05-06-2026, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

One acquaintance of mine was trying to use AI to generate summaries. It wasn't that hard to set up but the main issue was that about 20% of the time, the AI hallucinated while creating the summary. This ended up requiring a human who was familiar with the books had to review each summary to remove the crud. They mentioned one example where the AI created summaries of the books in the Chronicle of Narnia had several with Aslan as the villain.

The project was finally dropped since the need to review the summaries made the process take more man hours than having the humans write the summaries.

(source)

Comfy.n · 05-06-2026, 11:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

If this kind of A.I. summary is possible today and it's decent enough quality to actually be useful (doesn't miss important stuff and doesn't hallucinate stuff that didn't happen in the book), how do you access it, what does it cost, pluses/minuses of using it, any other details about it?

Yes, it is possible. I've a calibre plugin pretty much ready that can do exactly this, and it's now working accurately for both non-fiction and fiction books, as well as other documents. It took months to make it work reliably but I hope to release it soon, in a few weeks at most.

I found it essential to have an account at Open Router - https://openrouter.ai/ .

They offer a wide range of free and surprisingly capable models, and it's also free to get started. You just create an API key and paste it in calibre, that's it. I plan to provide detailed instructions when plugin is released.

Comfy.n · 05-06-2026, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

(source)

Yeah, as I said , it took months.

haertig · 05-06-2026, 11:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

Yes, it is possible. I've a calibre plugin pretty much ready that can do exactly this...

That's outstanding. I look forward to trying it!

Quoth · 05-07-2026, 04:57 AM

No, AI only shortens the source. No context or understanding to be able to summarise. It may sometimes use a scraped (stolen) summary or get it nearly right by accident. It will mostly even ignore a summary in the source.

Search (without AI) for actual real tests.

It's a lie helping to destroy the environment. Note a blurb, synopsis, plot summary and regular summary are different things and some only appropriate to a novel. Also a blurb ideally has no major spoilers and the others should have.

My own testing on a book I know resulted in a summary unrelated at all to the book.

Want a summary? Use search for a real one, employ someone or do it yourself. The LLM / Generative AI will never save time. They will not improve. Mathematically proven that they get worse and eventually collapse if fed their own output, which is now happening because the makers won't pay for humans to curate the content they scrape.

rowe · 05-07-2026, 05:29 AM

Understanding often isn't required for functional utility. Of course these models don't think, they're tools for pattern recognition and information retrieval. The risk of hallucination for this kind of task is low with frontier models and the output quality is usually high.

Quoth · 05-07-2026, 07:17 AM

Zero recognition. It's matching. Computer pattern matching works well but doesn't help with summaries.

The output quality is garbage, proven, unless the input is copies from somewhere.

There is no hallucination, only incorrect output which is high unless the summary is in the "training" data.

DiapDealer · 05-07-2026, 08:12 AM

And here we go again...

So it's the people who are satisfied with the results they're getting from AI summaries who are hallucinating?

rowe · 05-07-2026, 10:01 AM

Saying "pattern matching doesn't help with summaries" ignores what summarisation actually is. Identifying narrative structures, character arcs, and key plot points is literally just advanced pattern recognition. Models don't copy pre-written summaries verbatim. They construct responses based on the weights of all their relevant sources.

If the book itself is in the training data, the model can generate a fresh, accurate summary without ever having seen a pre-written one to copy from. And if the book isn't in the training data, modern AI searches the web to fetch the necessary plot details and synthesises them on the fly. The idea that they only output garbage unless they are copying a scraped summary is completely outdated.

Readirect · 05-07-2026, 12:20 PM

I once asked AI to recommend 5 thrillers which critics praised but had low sales.

It gave me the list, including detailed plot summaries, and all sounded interesting. Except 3 of the 5 didn't exist.

Relying upon AI clearly isn't a good idea, whether you're a reader asking it about books or the Pentagon giving it autonomy to kill.

Loosheesh · 05-07-2026, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Readirect

It gave me the list, including detailed plot summaries, and all sounded interesting. Except 3 of the 5 didn't exist.

Did this happen recently, like in the last year?

John F · 05-07-2026, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Readirect

I once asked AI to recommend 5 thrillers which critics praised but had low sales.

It gave me the list, including detailed plot summaries, and all sounded interesting. Except 3 of the 5 didn't exist.

...

Which AI did you ask?

05-05-2026, 07:58 PM	#1
haertig Wizard Posts: 2,028 Karma: 36307910 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Galaxy Tab A9+, Galaxy S25FE	Using A.I. for eBook summaries I am not an A.I. user and I don't know much about its capabilities. I was wondering about A.I. and eBooks. Has it advanced to the point where you can give it an EPUB and it will come up with a plot summary of the book (I'm talking about fiction books)? That would be useful to me when going to read a new book in a series where I haven't read earlier books in the series in a long time. In other words, summarize books I've already read so I can catch myself up on important details before continuing the rest of the series. If this kind of A.I. summary is possible today and it's decent enough quality to actually be useful (doesn't miss important stuff and doesn't hallucinate stuff that didn't happen in the book), how do you access it, what does it cost, pluses/minuses of using it, any other details about it?

05-07-2026, 05:29 AM	#9
rowe Groupie Posts: 199 Karma: 5500000 Join Date: Jul 2019 Device: Viwoods Reader, Mira, Paperlike Colour	Understanding often isn't required for functional utility. Of course these models don't think, they're tools for pattern recognition and information retrieval. The risk of hallucination for this kind of task is low with frontier models and the output quality is usually high. Last edited by rowe; 05-07-2026 at 06:11 AM.

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05-05-2026, 08:25 PM	#2
DNSB Bibliophagist Posts: 51,823 Karma: 180002962 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Vancouver Device: Kobo Sage, Libra Colour, Lenovo M8 FHD, Paperwhite 4, Tolino epos	One acquaintance of mine was trying to use AI to generate summaries. It wasn't that hard to set up but the main issue was that about 20% of the time, the AI hallucinated while creating the summary. This ended up requiring a human who was familiar with the books had to review each summary to remove the crud. They mentioned one example where the AI created summaries of the books in the Chronicle of Narnia had several with Aslan as the villain. The project was finally dropped since the need to review the summaries made the process take more man hours than having the humans write the summaries.

05-07-2026, 04:57 AM	#8
Quoth Still reading Posts: 15,456 Karma: 114319649 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	No, AI only shortens the source. No context or understanding to be able to summarise. It may sometimes use a scraped (stolen) summary or get it nearly right by accident. It will mostly even ignore a summary in the source. Search (without AI) for actual real tests. It's a lie helping to destroy the environment. Note a blurb, synopsis, plot summary and regular summary are different things and some only appropriate to a novel. Also a blurb ideally has no major spoilers and the others should have. My own testing on a book I know resulted in a summary unrelated at all to the book. Want a summary? Use search for a real one, employ someone or do it yourself. The LLM / Generative AI will never save time. They will not improve. Mathematically proven that they get worse and eventually collapse if fed their own output, which is now happening because the makers won't pay for humans to curate the content they scrape.

05-07-2026, 07:17 AM	#10
Quoth Still reading Posts: 15,456 Karma: 114319649 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	Zero recognition. It's matching. Computer pattern matching works well but doesn't help with summaries. The output quality is garbage, proven, unless the input is copies from somewhere. There is no hallucination, only incorrect output which is high unless the summary is in the "training" data.

05-07-2026, 08:12 AM	#11
DiapDealer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 29,426 Karma: 211545324 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD	And here we go again... So it's the people who are satisfied with the results they're getting from AI summaries who are hallucinating?

05-07-2026, 10:01 AM	#12
rowe Groupie Posts: 199 Karma: 5500000 Join Date: Jul 2019 Device: Viwoods Reader, Mira, Paperlike Colour	Saying "pattern matching doesn't help with summaries" ignores what summarisation actually is. Identifying narrative structures, character arcs, and key plot points is literally just advanced pattern recognition. Models don't copy pre-written summaries verbatim. They construct responses based on the weights of all their relevant sources. If the book itself is in the training data, the model can generate a fresh, accurate summary without ever having seen a pre-written one to copy from. And if the book isn't in the training data, modern AI searches the web to fetch the necessary plot details and synthesises them on the fly. The idea that they only output garbage unless they are copying a scraped summary is completely outdated.

05-07-2026, 12:20 PM	#13
Readirect Zealot Posts: 143 Karma: 20456 Join Date: Apr 2014 Device: KPW1	I once asked AI to recommend 5 thrillers which critics praised but had low sales. It gave me the list, including detailed plot summaries, and all sounded interesting. Except 3 of the 5 didn't exist. Relying upon AI clearly isn't a good idea, whether you're a reader asking it about books or the Pentagon giving it autonomy to kill.

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