E Ink, the company that creates the e-ink displays we all know and love, is partnering with MediaTek to bring AI capabilities to future e-readers (via Android Authority).
Technology moving to new advances is hardly anything new, but in this case, we have to ask: Does anybody actually want or need this?
A godsend for certain users
Details are sparse at the moment, but we do know MediaTek is developing a pair of processors, the MT8115 and MT8126, specifically for e-ink devices. These chips will contain dedicated AI hardware that processes on-device, rather than requiring a cloud.
Again, we’re not sure entirely what this will mean for AI on e-ink devices, but we can guess. It’s likely it’ll handle real-time translations, document summaries, and converting voice notes into text.
These sorts of features are likely to be a godsend for anyone who uses an e-ink tablet like the Kindle Scribe or Onyx Boox Go 10.3 for reading PDFs or other documents. But for anyone who sees “e-ink” as a shorthand for “e-reader”, this is yet another wasted new feature.
Yet more e-reader features nobody uses
Your e-reader is likely packed to the gills with stuff you don’t need or use, and AI risks becoming another one of those.
On Kindles alone there’s X-Ray, Story So Far and Recaps, Word Wise, and other features that I’m confident most readers don’t use, and likely aren’t even aware are there.
It’s bloat for bloat’s sake, and while it’s possible such AI features will be limited to the tablet-sized productivity devices they might actually be useful on, we all know it’s going to be slung into e-readers purely so the marketing can include the words “AI”.
In the meantime, more and more of an e-reader’s storage is going to be taken up by additional bloat in the operating system and functions that users tend not to want or use.
Ultimately, what people want from an e-reader is simple. You want a crisp and clear screen, fast page turning and load times, and the sort of battery life that puts old-style Nokia phones to shame. That’s it.
Instead, we’re about to see AI crammed into e-readers simply because it can be.
