Scribd, Inc., the digital content subscription service, has announced the beta release of Ask AI, a new artificial intelligence tool designed to improve user experience across its platforms, including its flagship namesake as well as Everand and Slideshare. The feature, which launched yesterday, is intended to streamline content discovery and information retrieval for users of both services.
For Everand, which offers its users a range of e-books and digital audiobooks, Ask AI offers a chat-bot interface to assist readers in searching for their next book to read. "We're trying to carve out our own value proposition and differentiator,” said Andrew Weinstein, Scribd VP of content acquisition and strategy.. “Having both e-books and audiobooks from top publishers, a lot of it overlapping, some unique. And helping people easily find what they want to read is where we're trying to differentiate and appeal to users who want to read and listen.”
On the Scribd platform, which hosts millions of user-uploaded documents, Ask AI functions more as a research assistant. The tool can analyze documents of up to 1,000 pages in seconds, extracting key information, pulling data, and expanding on concepts.
"With Ask AI, we're not just improving the user experience; we're beginning to redefine it," said Beck Kloss, chief product and technology officer at Scribd. "This innovative tool will empower our users to uncover insights and discover new content effortlessly, bringing a new level of personalization and efficiency to their digital journeys,"
Ask AI is powered by OpenAI's language models, and Scribd has implemented safeguards to protect user information and ensure compliance with their business relationships. Weinstein emphasized that Ask AI had been developed with careful consideration for publisher partnerships and content rights. "We've been working with most of these publishers, especially the bigger ones, for over a decade, and plan to continue to do so," he explained. "We are being very thoughtful about what permissions we have and what we can do with them."
Steve Neola, senior director of product management at Scribd, added: "One of the biggest publisher fears is that their content is being used to train language models. That's explicitly not happening here. All we're trying to do is help them promote their content in a way that attracts more customers, and they benefit through the payouts from that engagement and broader awareness.”
While specific technical details of Ask AI were not disclosed, Neola indicated that Scribd was using A/B testing to manage user access and gather data on how different customer segments used the tool. This approach has allowed the company to iterate and improve the feature rapidly.
"AI is kind of doing something the publishing industry has been doing for a long time," Weinstein said—aggregating information from readers and then delivering them what they want and need. “I think what's impressive is the scale and the speed that it can do it.”
