Using AI to get book recommendations

Day 9 / 366

Another small resolution for me this year is to get back to reading books. I will be trying to read one a week. The biggest problem I face is trying to find new books that I would like, and so far ChatGPT has been helpful with that. So I thought why not make this into a small app that can benefit others as well?

Here’s my app

https://ai-book-rec.streamlit.app/

You might be thinking, do we need this? Yes, there are websites like Goodreads and Amazon that will recommend books based on your ratings and reading history. But for me, the best recommendations I have got are from other readers.

When someone comes to me for book recommendations, I ask them what sort of book they like reading. I also ask them what about that book they like. Based on that, I recommend a book and also explain to them why they will enjoy reading it.

My app does the same, just it replaces me with ChatGPT acting as a book expert. You tell the app a book that you loved and explain why you loved it, and it will come up with a book recommendation for you.

It’s my theory that with AI moving into our apps, most of our interfaces will become conversational like this.