Resolution criteria
Will I be able to
Opwn any random book or pdf or whatever which kindle can display as text (not internally an image format) in the kindle
Do something so the kindle reads it out to me in a human voice with good intonation
Without having to pay a monthly fee or one time fee. IE using the kindle app to have things read out loud to me.
By mid 2026
I don't think they'll do it since it'll undercut audible.
Discussion of later possible consequences
But if you think about what this enables it's incredible. Imagine doing word searches and having it read our the entire related paragraph, right away, for the ten hits for say the name of a character. Or similar
Mp3s are so bad at enabling cool products, but so profitable. Will Amazon be able to break away?
Imagine this facility mixed with GPT. "Give me character sketches for the top five characters read out, with appropriate quotes from the first half of the book".
Imagine being able to talk to it and ask it to "figure out my vocab based on what I ask you, then help me learn words I might not know perfectly, based on continuous vocal feedback I get. I'll softly say 'hmm' whenever I can't quite perfectly define a word". For your native or foreign languages. Imagine having LLMs first read out simplified versions of each chapter or line, then the regular reading
Imagine being able to instruct LLMs to read poetry sections slower, or again, easily.
Imagine if audible didn't just talk over you. You and a friend could listen; if you asked a friend their interpretation of a passage, kindle would automatically stop and let you two discuss. Then start again when you were ready or at a signal. If someone's phone rings or other noise interrupts the environment, it would automatically stop.
Imagine sensible back and forward amounts, by sentence, paragraph, page or chapter. Rather than whatever garbage it does now (10s or 30s)
Imagine listening to a mystery and being able to ask an LLM to review clues or character or the last dialogue, with understanding.
All of these require text+ability to read and are only very badly satisfied by mp3, even with good transcriptions.
But the cash cow of audible is so huge, can kindle team fight them to get permission to do any of this?
Related questions
Pretty sure the resolution criteria and the description conflict each other.
The resolution criteria seems to be whether you can have your Kindle device read out loud a book, while the description talks about LLMs and how it'll be great if you can ask it about the book and have it interact with you in a conversational way, which doesn't seem to be related.
@bohaska yes the later part is speculation about what the initial change to make audiobooks internally text-based would unblock. The criteria is as written.