Libby is adding an AI book recommendation feature

Overdrive’s digital book lending app Libby is adding — you guessed it! — AI. The new Inspire Me feature is an AI-fueled discovery tool tuned to your local branch’s collection. Following a soft launch this month, it will be officially available in September.

To avoid the pitfalls of a full-on chatbot, Overdrive is limiting the discovery process of the feature. Instead of typing freely into a prompt box, you’ll start by answering several canned preference questions. These include categories (such as fiction and biography), age groups (adult or child) and preset adjectives (like “clever” and “silly”). You can also let it make recommendations based on your previously saved titles.

The AI will then spit out five suggestions from your local library. Overdrive says Inspire Me prioritizes ebooks and audiobooks that are immediately available. Each recommendation will include a brief explanation of how it aligns with your stated interests.

Some in the library community reacted sharply to the feature. “Smoke is pouring out of my ears,” librarian Rachel Storm posted on Bluesky (via TechCrunch). “I’m honestly surprised it took this long for them to enshittify Libby,” Orion Kidder responded.

Libby’s AI privacy policy states that Inspire Me only sends tags connected to “a random selection of titles you have saved” to the model. The policy says it only sends the book titles, not any other details about you or your device. Overdrive says it designed the feature to minimize energy impact and will monitor its footprint over time.

As long as there isn’t anything sneaky tucked in beyond that, this sounds like a relatively tame (and potentially handy) use of AI. Then again, I sometimes spend my work hours writing about the truly disturbing shit, so take my perspective as you will.

Regardless of your perspective, the feature will roll out broadly in September. You’ll find it by tapping the Libby icon in the app menu.