Amazon Prime Video’s AI will recap the story for you

Amazon Prime Video is getting a new AI feature. The streaming service is introducing X-Ray Recaps to generate a recap of the story of TV shows.

The feature creates brief summaries of full seasons and episodes of shows. So, it is a plot synopsis? But how is this an AI feature? All Amazon has to do is publish summaries on a per-episode basis, right? No. X-Ray Recaps offers a personalized experience. It will take various factors into consideration, such as the timestamp that you are into a new episode, or mid-way through a season. X-Ray Recaps will generate text snippets of key highlights, plot points for you. Amazon’s announcement states that X-Ray Recaps are designed to avoid spoilers, and prevent information without wasting time.

This is a cool use of artificial intelligence. Your privacy is not invaded, your personal data is not used to train the AI.

How does Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray Recaps work?

Amazon says that X-Ray Recaps are powered by Amazon Bedrock, which is an AWS service that is used for building generative AI apps and models. The AI analyzes the content of videos, and combines them with subtitles, dialogue, etc., and generates descriptions of important events, while avoiding spoilers.

Amazon Prime Video X-Ray Recaps AI feature

X-Ray Recaps can be accessed from the detail page while playing a video on Prime Video. Click on the Recap button, to access different options, such as a recap of a specific episode, an entire season, or a previous season.

Amazon Prime Video X-Ray Recaps AI feature

That could be very helpful, and not just for people who tend to forget things often. We all have busy lives with work/school/family, etc. As a result, we may not have the time to watch TV shows regularly. When that happens, we may forget the story, or cannot recall a part of it. This can even lead to a loss of interest, and you may stop watching the show altogether.

There are some rare cases where some shows can take a couple of years between seasons. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and The Wheel of Time are some notable examples. The second season of these shows were released two years after the pilot aired. You could easily forget the events that happened in the previous season. Would you sit through and rewatch all the previous episodes? Not everyone would be interested in that, or even have the patience for it, let alone have the time to spare. I mean, you could fast-forward or rewind the videos to get a recap. On the other hand, an AI generated recap could come in very handy here. It requires no manual effort, and all you need to do is just read a few lines of text.

X-Ray Recaps are not available for all shows, the AI feature is still in beta, and is currently available for Amazon MGM Studios Original series such as Daisy Jones and the Six, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Wheel of Time, and The Boys. Hopefully, it will be expanded to more shows in the future.

(Images: via Amazon)

X-Ray Recaps is available for Fire TV users in the U.S. today. Amazon says that it will add support for more devices by the end of the year.

Summary