How to use AI while reading a book without replacing the reading

Start with a question about the text in front of you

Read the passage first, then ask about the part that stopped you. A character you half-remember, an unfamiliar idea, or a sentence with several possible meanings can all be starting points for a useful conversation.

In Actually Read, try “Explain this paragraph in plain language,” “What do we know about this character so far?” or “Recap what has happened up to my current chapter.” The companion searches the selected book to find text relevant to your question.

How does Actually Read ground AI answers in your book?

Actually Read actively searches the book text, retrieves relevant passages, and uses them as context for its answer. Answers include citations to actual sources from your book. Tapping a citation takes you directly back to the relevant passage in the reader.

This approach is called retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG: retrieve relevant text, then use it to answer the question. The companion has evidence from your book in context, and you can check the explanation against the original text.

Read the surrounding paragraph and ask why it supports an interpretation, or whether another reading is possible. Citations make the answer easier to examine; an AI explanation can still miss a nuance.

What does a useful book question look like?

The homepage shows an example from Chapter 9 of The Picture of Dorian Gray: “What does Basil mean by ‘one tragedy might be followed by another’?” The answer connects the phrase to Basil’s concern that Dorian might harm himself after Sibyl’s death and includes supporting sources from the book.

That is the kind of help a reading companion should provide: explain a specific line through the surrounding story, show the evidence, and help you return to the chapter with a clearer understanding.

Can you get a recap without spoilers?

Turn on Actually Read’s Avoid Spoilers setting. Retrieval stays constrained to the part of the book you have already reached, giving the companion a boundary for its grounded answers and recaps.

Ask for the story so far when returning after a break. You can revisit chat entries in your reading history alongside sessions, progress, and highlights.

Where does the book search happen?

Book indexing and retrieval happen on-device for every AI model option. The full book is not uploaded to an AI provider for answering questions. Advanced AI sends your question, relevant retrieved excerpts, and other request context to the cloud, as explained in the privacy policy.

On supported devices, the companion can use Apple’s on-device Foundation Models. On-device AI is included in the free core reading experience. Advanced AI provides more capable cloud models through a subscription; current prices and allowances are shown in the app.

Which books can the AI companion use?

You can download from over 70,000 free public-domain ebooks through Project Gutenberg or import your own EPUB or PDF. EPUBs offer the richest reading and book-grounded AI experience; PDF support is more limited.

Actually Read also tracks physical books and books you read elsewhere. Finding a cover, author, and summary through the catalog does not supply the full text, so a physical book record alone does not provide book-specific AI answers.