Since jailbreaking my old Kindle 4, I have been amazed by what I have been able to do with it. I have turned it into an E-Ink smart home dashboard, used it as a Pocket Casts player, and even made it into a slow-refresh secondary monitor. I had seen that you could add an LLM to KOReader, but I wondered if this was taking things too far.
I Thought Adding AI to a Kindle Would Be a Gimmick
There’s Only So Much AI You Can Take
AI is incredible. We tend to take it for granted, but when you stop to think about what it can do, you can’t deny that the technology is impressive.
The problem is that companies try to shoehorn AI into everything. It drives me crazy when major companies add AI features that serve no real purpose. They haven’t added them because they’re useful; they’ve added them because they can make them work, and they want to cram as much AI into their products as possible.
When I saw that you could add an LLM to the KOReader app, I was understandably skeptical. The beauty of an eReader is that it is largely distraction-free. Did I really want to add an LLM to a device that was meant to let me read uninterrupted?
In the interests of science, I decided to give it a try. I could always remove it again if it wasn’t useful.
Setting Up the LLM Was Fairly Easy to Do
There’s a Dedicated KOReader Plugin
KOReader is a popular document viewer app that you can install on a jailbroken Kindle to replace the stock reading software. It is much more capable than using a standard Kindle: it can read more formats, offers far more customization, and comes with a large set of useful plugins.
There is a full set of community-developed plugins that you can add to KOReader. One of these is Assistant, which is described as an AI helper plugin. Installing it is as simple as downloading and extracting the plugin and dropping it into the KOReader plugins folder on your Kindle.
Before doing so, I needed to edit the configuration file to let the plugin know which AI service to talk to. Unsurprisingly, requests are not processed on the meager hardware of my Kindle. You can connect to AI services like OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Groq, NVIDIA, and OpenRouter. You can also connect to Ollama running local models on your own hardware, which is the route I went for.
I entered the relevant details for my Ollama instance in the configuration file before copying everything over to my Kindle.
I Can Ask Questions About Words or Phrases While Reading
There Are Plenty of Predefined Options
Once everything was copied over, I took the device for a spin. Normally, when I highlight a word in a book and select it, I see options to look it up or add it to my vocabulary builder list. Now I have two new options: Wikipedia AI and Dictionary AI. Selecting either option uses the LLM to provide information or definitions for the selected word.
Even more impressive was selecting a full phrase. This brought up an AI Assistant option, and selecting it opened a new dashboard with a wide selection of options. I could type my own query about the chosen passage to send to the LLM, but this would be a bit of a hassle on my old Kindle, which doesn’t have a touchscreen or keyboard.
Thankfully, there is also a full section of predefined options, including Dictionary, Vocabulary, Grammar, Summarize, Simplify, Key Points, Historical Context, and more. One of my favorites is ELI5. If I highlight a complex concept from a book, I can open the AI Assistant, select ELI5, and the LLM will “Explain Like I’m 5.” It’s a great way to get a simple explanation of complex topics.
It’s Amazing for Reading in Another Language
A Dictionary Can’t Infer Meaning
One of the most useful features was one I didn’t really think about until I tried it. I am learning Italian, and reading books in the language is a great way to improve. I tend to choose books that are simple and that I already know well, such as the Harry Potter series.
Despite knowing the books well, I still come across plenty of words I don’t understand. There is a standard translation option in KOReader, but a literal translation doesn’t always give the right meaning of a word or phrase. For example, the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” when translated into another language and back again can come out as “invisible, insane,” which is clearly not the intended meaning.
Using the LLM, I can select a phrase, open the AI assistant, and choose the Translate option. Instead of just translating the words, the LLM can infer the meaning of the phrase, which has really helped when reading books in a foreign language.
Adding an LLM to My Kindle Was Better Than I Expected
I was fairly certain that I would try out the LLM on the Kindle and then remove it. Much to my surprise, I am keeping it set up. I am using it far more than I ever expected.
