Amazon launches AI-generated TV show summaries
Amazon has turned to AI to create synopses for TV shows on Prime Video — starting with its own original series — in a way that the company says doesn’t risk revealing spoilers.
On Monday, Amazon announced X-Ray Recaps on Prime Video, touting the generative AI-based feature as “a new way to get up to speed without wasting time or risking spoilers.” The system creates “short, easy-to-digest summaries” of entire seasons of TV shows, individual episodes or specific segments of episodes “down to the exact minute of what you’re watching,” the company said.
At launch, Prime Video viewers can use X-Ray Recaps for all Amazon MGM Studios original series, including “The Boys,” “Upload,” “Daisy Jones & the Six,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “The Wheel of Time.” X-Ray Recaps is currently in beta and is now available to users of Amazon’s Fire TV connected devices in the US, with support for additional devices by the end of the year.
Here’s an example of the feature that summarizes “Upload” season 2, episodes 1-3:
With X-Ray Recaps, “we’re directly addressing a common problem customers face when streaming content: forgetting where they left off,” Adam Gray, VP of Product at Prime Video, said in a statement. “With this context-aware functionality, Prime Video delivers summaries of memorable moments and key plot points, so our customers can quickly get back to what they were watching or rediscover why they fell in love with a series in the first place.”
X-Ray Recaps is powered by Amazon Bedrock, an AWS service for building and scaling generative AI applications with foundational models. Using a combination of Bedrock models and custom AI models trained on Amazon SageMaker, ,” the company said. . The X-Ray Recaps system applies ‘guardrails’ to ensure ‘the generation of spoiler-free and concise summaries’.
X-Ray Recaps joins Prime Video’s existing X-Ray features, allowing viewers to dive deeper into the TV shows and movies they’re watching, with trivia and information about the cast, soundtrack, production details and more.
On compatible devices, users can access X-Ray Recaps from the Prime Video details page or while playing on the X-Ray experience. Once selected, you can choose from different types of recaps, including recaps of current episodes, the season to date, or previous seasons.
