Libby added a feature called Inspire Me in September 2025 that uses a large language model to recommend books from a patron's local library. Users pick a mood or type of read — such as "cozy" or "spine-tingling" — and the AI returns five titles available to borrow, with a short explanation of each match.

Inspire Me guides users through a structured prompt flow: choosing fiction or nonfiction, selecting an audience (adult, teen, or children), and picking descriptive words that match the kind of read they want. The feature uses a large language model — a type of AI trained on large amounts of text to understand and generate language — contained within OverDrive's own environment. The model only has access to catalog metadata (title, author, description); it does not access the text of any ebook or audiobook, nor does it receive personal data, device information, or individual borrowing history. When a user draws recommendations from saved tags, only a random selection of titles from that tag is shared with the model. OverDrive caches AI responses across users to reduce environmental impact and limits daily tag-based queries. A feedback button lets users flag inappropriate AI outputs. The feature launched to significant pushback from some librarians, who objected primarily to being unable to hide or disable the Inspire Me button from the Libby interface.