About E.D.D.i.
His 5-year mission: To take the FREE books of Earth to the edges of the universe.
The little spaceship from Norwood
Somewhere in Norwood, South London, E.D.D.i. is preparing for a rather unusual voyage. His spaceship isn't carrying soldiers, supplies or mysterious alien technology. Its most precious cargo is a library of stories from Earth.
His mission? To seek out new readers, revisit old worlds and share the wonderful books humanity has written — from gothic castles and daring adventures to mysteries, monsters and faraway planets. The journey starts here, with a free book and the press of a Play button.
What is E.D.D.i.?
Behind the spaceship story, E.D.D.i. is a free, open-source book and document reader created by Gunpowder Studios. It lets you explore classic public-domain books, open your own books and documents, follow the words on screen and listen to them read aloud by natural-sounding AI narrators — directly in your browser.
What can E.D.D.i. read?
E.D.D.i. supports EPUB, PDF, Word (.docx), plain text (.txt), Markdown (.md), HTML web pages (.html), RTF, ODT and FB2 files. So whether it's a novel, a saved article or a document you've written, E.D.D.i. can help turn it into something you can read or listen to.
A note about PDFs: PDF files must contain selectable, real text. Scanned pages or image-only PDFs can't be read aloud because E.D.D.i. doesn't currently perform optical character recognition (OCR).
There's no subscription or account needed. Books you add are stored in your browser on your device, and E.D.D.i. can remember where you stopped reading. The aim is simple: make great stories easier to discover and enjoy, whether you're reading with your eyes, listening, or doing a bit of both.
Powered by open-source voices
E.D.D.i.'s AI narration is powered by Kokoro, generating speech in your browser. We're grateful to the open-source developers and contributors who make this possible. Explore Kokoro voices.
For now, we're focusing on getting the best listening experience on newer, more capable phones, tablets and computers rather than compromising narration to support older hardware. AI voices need processing power and memory, so performance and compatibility depend on your device and browser.
Free books, responsibly shared
E.D.D.i. helps you discover public-domain works and read books you are authorised to use; it doesn't make every ebook free. Copyright rules differ between countries, and newer translations and editions can have their own rights. You can also open legally obtained DRM-free EPUBs for personal use where permitted.
E.D.D.i. is free to use, and its source code is available on GitHub.
Made to be shared, not sold
We made E.D.D.i. using free and open-source code, with a little help from AI along the way to turn our ideas into working software.
We believe technological advances like AI should help us move forward as a planet — making knowledge, stories and useful tools more accessible to everyone, rather than always being about making money. That's why E.D.D.i. is free, and why we want to share what we've built.
Besides, E.D.D.i. couldn't open a bank account even if he wanted to. He keeps failing the “I'm not a robot” tick box!