It’s been a fairly slow news week in the world of E Ink. Yes, Apple has an event on the horizon and there’ll no doubt be shiny new Macs and iPads to talk about. But I’d rather wait until the dust settles than add to the speculation machine.
So instead, I want to talk about something that’s quietly creeping into even the calmest corners of our tech lives.
Artificial Intelligence
And before you roll your eyes, this isn’t going to be an ‘AI is amazing’ piece. Nor is it an ‘AI is just slop’ rant.
This is about Kindles. About note-taking tablets. About the very devices many of us buy to get away from the noise.
Because here’s the thing.
For years, the Kindle felt like a refuge. It didn’t try to be clever. No feeds. No pop-ups. No algorithm nudging you towards what to think next. (What to buy next? That’s always been an Amazon speciality, but we’ll leave that for another day.) You bought a book, you read it, and that was that.
One of the reasons people love Kindles and E Ink devices is precisely because they feel like the opposite of modern tech. Calm. Focused. Single-purpose.
But that world is shifting.
Not just on the Scribe, but on the standard Kindle reading experience too. And it raises a fairly pointed question:
Do we want AI in the one bit of tech we bought to escape everything else?
When AI Is Actually Useful
Coming to Kindles everywhere at some point this year Amazon is releasing an AI-powered ‘catch-up’ feature called Story So Far. And I’ll be honest — And honestly, this is one of those AI features where I read it about it and thought, ‘Yep. That’s sounds genuinely useful.’ I have loads of books on the go and being able to go back to one I haven’t read for while and immediately be reminded of what’s gone on sounds great.
If you’ve ever opened up a Kindle book and thought, “Wait… who’s that again?” or “Why are they angry?” you’ll know exactly why this seems like a useful addition to your reading arsenal.
Then there’s Ask This Book.
Highlight a passage and you can ask questions:
‘Who is this character?’
‘What’s the significance of this moment?’
‘How does this link to earlier?’
It’s designed to be spoiler-aware, meaning it should only respond based on where you are in the book. On paper, that’s clever. Potentially very helpful.
But, a shift has, and is, occurring.
The Kindle used to be ‘dumb’ in the best possible way. You did the remembering. The connecting. The reflecting. Now some of that cognitive work is being offloaded to the device.
The Scribe and the Productivity Push
The philosophical tension becomes more obvious with the Kindle Scribe.
Amazon has been adding AI-driven tools such as notebook summarisation, smarter handwritten search, and ‘refine writing’ features that turn your scruffy handwriting into tidy text.
For work? This could be brilliant.
Meetings. Study. Planning. Sermon prep. Journalling, if you want something legible at the end.
But it subtly changes what a notebook is.
Handwriting isn’t just data entry. It’s thinking. The mess is part of the process. Arrows pointing everywhere and nowhere. Half-finished sentences. Scribbles in the margin. Writing something down and immediately disagreeing with yourself.
That chaos is your brain working things out.
When a device offers to summarise, refine, structure and clean it up, it nudges your notebook towards becoming an output machine. Something neat. Shareable. Actionable. Efficient.
That’s is all not inherently bad. But it is different.
It’s Not Just Amazon
This isn’t an Amazon-only move. Many E Ink manufacturers are getting in on the AI act.
BOOX is leaning heavily into AI assistants and productivity framing.
iFLYTEK markets record–transcribe–summarise workflows as a core selling point.
Bigme pushes chat-style AI features as a headline attraction.
Viwoods, with its minimal branding, is weaving AI into the workflow story.
Across the board, E Ink devices are moving from ‘paper replacement’ to ‘thinking assistant’. They’re no longer just showing what you’ve written. They’re interpreting it. Organising it. Compressing it.
And that word matters.
Compression always discards something. Sometimes that something is fluff. Sometimes it’s the line that hit you hardest. Sometimes it’s the half-formed idea that needed time rather than tidying.
The Trade Off We Don’t Talk About
E Ink became popular partly because it felt like a step back towards something older — and perhaps healthier.
Reading without noise. Writing without distraction. Thinking without being steered. AI, by its nature, leans towards speed, productivity and optimisation.
Reading is slow on purpose. Handwriting is slow on purpose. They force you to sit with something. If your device starts summarising and organising for you, are you gaining efficiency or losing something more … subtle?
I’m not saying AI has no place in this space. I am saying we should be honest about the trade off.
Because one of the reasons many of us bought a Kindle in the first place was to escape the constant pressure to optimise everything. To resist the idea that every thought must become content, every note must become a task, every idea must be distilled into something efficient.
Do we really want that logic creeping into the one quiet corner we carved out for ourselves?
So I’m curious.
If you’ve got a Scribe or one of these newer AI-focused E Ink tablets, are you actually using the smart features? Do they enhance your workflow, or do they feel like they’re changing the atmosphere of the device?
I’d genuinely like to know where you land - leave a comment below.
That’s all folks!
If you’ve spotted any other E-ink, Kindle or iPad stories I’ve missed, drop them in the comments or email me at markfromthespark@gmail.com.
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