New features:

1. Allow asking AI questions about any book in your calibre library. Right click the "View" button and choose "Discuss selected book(s) with AI"
2. AI: Allow asking AI what book to read next by right clicking on a book and using the "Similar books" menu
3. AI: Add a new backend for "LM Studio" which allows running various AI models locally

Bug fixes:

1. Use a named local timezone for better display of historical dates in the local timezone (Closes tickets: 2133435)
2. PDF Input: Fix a regression in the new PDF input engine that caused HTML markup to not be always escaped (Closes tickets: 2133846)
3. Get books: Update amazon.it store plugin (Closes tickets: 2132253)
4. Fix addition of format specific options when using calibredb catalog with command line flags
5. calibredb catalog: Fix generation of language field in BiBTeX catalogs (Closes tickets: 2133134)
6. Fix incorrect series index when downloading metadata from amazon.co.jp (Closes tickets: 2132182)
7. Fix a regression in the previous release that caused the case change menu to not be present in the comments editor.
8. Fix a bug in 8.16.0 that prevented the Ask AI what to read next feature from working (Closes tickets: 2133932)
9. Fix a crash in 8.16.0 that caused using the "Close" button in Ask AI to crash calibre on some systems ( – Closes tickets: 2133992)

New news sources:

Improved news sources: