ProQuest have introduced AI to their eBook platform. The Ebook Central Research Assistant. AI tool aims to help users understand the main ideas in each chapter of certain ebooks. It doesn’t replace reading the book or shorten its content. Instead, it attempts to give a clear overview of key topics in each chapter, potentially making it easier for readers to find the most important parts quickly.
ProQuest envisage that their tool will reduce the time you spend looking for the key points of a chapter, so perhaps reducing the amount of time you spend in a book, leading to shorter turnaround times and more availability of ebooks. This might well be handy for some popular titles.
If the Research Assistant is available for a title, then in the online reader, you will see a new button in the reader menu panel. Selecting this will open the Research Assistant. PDF and EPUB have different reader panels, so make sure you look in the right place.
You will see an AI-generated summary of the book, and a list of related subjects, that have been provided by the publisher. You can use these subject listings to search for other book titles in eBook Central.
When you look at an individual chapter, you'll see an option to show that what the AI tool thinks is the chapter's key takeaway and a list of concepts and their definitions related to the chapter, generated by the AI tool on the spot. These concept terms can be used to search for other closely related titles, helping you to quickly find additional material and perhaps help with your study or research.
There are a couple of answers to this:
Read the warning at the top of the page. AI summarisers will probably get better in time, but they are pretty hit-and-miss at the moment.
Who are you going to trust here: the author or the generative AI tool?
ProQuest themselves admit this is a work in progress and acknowledge that their tool may give erroneous information.
