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Libby is adding an AI book recommendation feature

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. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/libby-is-adding-an-ai-book-recommendation-feature-190903260.html?src=rss

Windows 11’s yearly ’25H2′ update enters its final preview stage

Windows 11’s yearly ’25H2′ update enters its final preview stage

Microsoft is sending the next annual feature update for Windows 11, version 25H2, out to the Release Preview channel for testing beginning today. It’s a signal that Windows 11 25H2 will arrive on your PC soon, as September quickly approaches. Actually, chances are that you have most of the bits associated with Windows 11 H2 on your PC right now. Microsoft is servicing both Windows 11 24H2 as well as Windows 11 25H2 on the same servicing branch, and the 25H2 update will be pushed to your PC as an “enablement package.” In simpler terms, this means that Microsoft has simply sent most of the code in Windows 11 25H2 to your PC already, and the only thing left to do will be to turn the new, updated features on. The enablement package will basically be a standard patch, delivered to your PC by Windows Update. How big the patch is and how long it will take to install is basically determined by your habits: if you’ve previously kept your PC up to date, there won’t be that much code to install and the process should go far more quickly than the sizeable Windows 11 24H2 update that took place late last year. In June, Microsoft pitched the Windows 11 25H2 update as “as easy as a restart.” It will be rolled out in the “second half of 2025,” Microsoft said then. Naturally, there will be bugs — though with a smaller update hopefully they will be minimal. You can always postpone the Windows 11 25H2 Update by using the “Pause updates” control in Windows Update . That will buy you seven weeks until Microsoft forces you to apply new patches, including Windows 11 25H2. Usually, there’s a small cadre of what Microsoft calls “seekers” that flip on the “Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” toggle in Windows Update, and those users will receive Windows 11 25H2 first. When should you get Windows 11 25H2? Typically, Microsoft’s fall release happens in September or October. I’d expect it to roll out in September, since it’s on the smaller side. What new features are expected in Windows 11 25H2? Typically, Microsoft tests a variety of new features throughout the year, in the Canary, Dev, Beta, and Release Preview Channels. Microsoft pushes some of these features out via app updates; with others, it enables them as part of the feature update. Here’s some of what we expect. Start’s mobile sidebar By Windows 11 25H2, Microsoft should be making its Start mobile sidebar available to all PCs that connect the PC to either an iPhone or preferably an Android phone. While that doesn’t do away with the Your Phone application, it’s an easy way to see if you have messages that need replying to, for example. Microsoft Supposedly, you should be able to resume an app that you’ve begun on your Android phone and launch it on your PC via the Your Phone app, too. New category views within Start Similarly, Microsoft is tweaking the Start menu to show off different views, such as a new “category” layout . That should appear in Windows 11 25H2, though it’s not guaranteed. Both the mobile sidebar and the new category views should be adjustable via the Personalization > Start menu within Windows Settings. Improved Settings Page Microsoft has shown off an improved Settings page with “cards” that show off the highlights of your system at the very top. Microsoft added this to via the 25H2 release schedule earlier this year, so it should be available this fall as well. Likewise, the “smarter” Settings should respond to queries using AI. Microsoft Semantic search Microsoft unveiled semantic search in the 25H2 Canary Channel earlier in August. Essentially, it allows you to search for a file using its characteristics (“the presentation I made to the town council”)without knowing the exact file name. Quick Machine Recovery An under-the-hood change, Quick Machine Recovery should facilitate issues when your computer crashes. Instead of putting the onus on you to solve your own problems, what QMR claims to do is search out the solution on Microsoft’s servers and apply it itself. Click-to-Do improvements Microsoft also is adding new contextual features to Click-to-Do , such as describing an image or converting a table to Excel, with just a right-click of the mouse. Microsoft

Taco Bell, which deployed voice AI-powered ordering at 500+ drive-through locations, is now reconsidering the tech after viral videos of glitches and pranks (Isabelle Bousquette/Wall Street Journal)

Taco Bell, which deployed voice AI-powered ordering at 500+ drive-through locations, is now reconsidering the tech after viral videos of glitches and pranks (Isabelle Bousquette/Wall Street Journal)

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal : Taco Bell, which deployed voice AI-powered ordering at 500+ drive-through locations, is now reconsidering the tech after viral videos of glitches and pranks —  More artificial intelligence isn't always better, the chain is realizing, as it considers when and how bots should be deployed

Watch: AMD talks ROCm and how it’s a game-changer for Radeon PCs

Watch: AMD talks ROCm and how it’s a game-changer for Radeon PCs

You might not have heard about AMD’s ROCm . It (unofficially) stands for Radeon Open Compute PlatforM—a pretty terrible acronym—and it’s pronounced “rock ’em.” This is a way for programs to take advantage of the computing power in a graphics card instead of a CPU. Think of it as a software accelerator, sort of like AMD’s version of Nvidia CUDA. And it’s about to become a lot more relevant. PCWorld contributor Will Smith got to speak with Andrej Zdravkovic, Senior Vice President of GPU Technologies at AMD. While ROCm is mostly relevant for large-scale “big iron” enterprise applications right now, the latest changes are making it more relevant for regular Windows users. How so? Well, the new HIP (Heterogeneous Interface for Portability) SDK. It’s a bit of special sauce that lets programs designed to use CUDA and similar systems tap into ROCm’s power to leverage Radeon graphics cards. And it has the potential to be a huge game-changer. Basically, any local program that needs extra power—from AI applications to rendering to file processing and beyond—can benefit from this, with only small tweaks needed to get existing code up and running in most cases. Check out the full video interview above for the technical ins and outs. And for more deep dives into the latest PC tech, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld and The Full Nerd Network on YouTube.