Amazon is pulling Prime Video further into the AI game. The corporation has now launched X-Ray Recaps, allowing the streaming service to provide customized recaps to viewers as they watch — generated by generative artificial intelligence.
Described as “brief, easy-to-digest summaries,” these personalized recaps can be created for anything as large as a full season of television to as small as a few minutes of an episode. Prime Video also promises these summaries will be spoiler-free.
In the press release for the offering, Amazon states that when you miss a crucial moment in a show or movie, your first instinct may be to rewind or “search online for a summary.” That is a fairly pointed jab at the cottage industry that has emerged of blogs and websites — such as this one — providing obsessive guides for viewers. Whether this offering will remain a niche one or will shift the TV ecosystem remains to be seen. But it stands as further proof that AI is already disrupting Hollywood.
“Prime Video product and technology teams work relentlessly behind the scenes to enhance customers’ viewing experience, and with the creation of X-Ray Recaps, we’re directly addressing a common problem customers face when streaming content: forgetting where they left off,” Adam Gray, vice president of product at Prime Video, said in a statement to press. “With this context-aware functionality, Prime Video will deliver summaries of memorable moments and important plot points so our customers can quickly jump back into what they were watching or rediscover why they fell in love with a series in the first place.”
X-Ray Recaps can be launched any time you’re watching Prime Video. Either go to the show or movie’s detail page on Prime Video or open the X-Ray menu while watching. Once you select the option to create a recap, you can choose between summaries of current episodes, the season so far or the previous season.
The feature builds on the streamer’s X-Ray technology, which currently offers viewers information about the cast, soundtrack and production details as they’re watching episodes or movies on the streamer. It’s powered by Amazon Bedrock, an Amazon Web Service offering for building and scaling generative AI applications with foundational models.
