Google Adds Gemini Book Insights to iOS and Expands It Past 1 Million Ebooks

Google has brought its Gemini-built Book insights feature to the Play Books iOS app and expanded it to more than one million English-language ebooks. The update makes AI reading help available across Android, iOS and the web reader, but it is separate from Gemini Notebook’s purchase-gated book-source feature.

Book insights works inside the reading experience. A reader can use Catch me up for a recap of material already read, or ask questions about a book’s themes, context or characters. Google says the feature was built with Gemini and is available on the Play Books Android app, iOS app and web reader.

That is a different workflow from Expert Intelligence, launched in Gemini Notebook on August 27. That feature lets people use digital books they bought through Google Play Books as sources, cite material from them, and generate outputs such as infographics, Audio Overviews and quizzes. It begins in the Gemini Notebook app and web dashboard rather than the Play Books reader.

The two catalog figures describe different product rollouts, not a before-and-after count for one feature. Book insights now spans more than one million English-language ebooks, including bestsellers and free titles. Expert Intelligence’s initial selection covers more than 100,000 titles from publishers including Bloomsbury, De Gruyter Brill, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan Publishers, O’Reilly Media and Penguin Random House.

The ownership rule is the material limit on the notebook path. In a shared Gemini notebook, every collaborator must own or buy a referenced book to fully use Expert Intelligence. Google is also offering U.S. users one free book during the launch campaign, while supplies last, giving some people a way to try that route without an initial purchase.

Google says Expert Intelligence will later reach the core Gemini app and AI Mode in Search. For now, the company’s book AI is split between a broad in-reader companion for recaps and questions, and a narrower notebook tool that treats eligible purchased books as material for cited, reformatted outputs.

That distinction sets the practical choice. Readers who want help staying oriented in a book can use Book insights within Play Books. People who want to build a Gemini Notebook around a book and turn its contents into other formats need a qualifying Play Books purchase and, for shared work, matching ownership among collaborators.