Prime Video just got a big AI upgrade — meet X-Ray recaps
Now you can catch up on what you missed while scrolling TikTok
Amazon is turning to artificial intelligence for its latest ‘X-ray’ feature. Now, if you get distracted by TikTok while watching a TV show on Prime Video you’ll get a brief recap of what you missed.
Dubbed "X-Ray Recaps", the content will be personalized to your viewing habits and provide a catch-up summary up to the point you last watched. This will be in the form of "short textual snippets of key cliffhangers" and character-driven plots.
Amazon says it will generate a recap regardless of where you are watching or when you stopped watching. This includes whether you took a coffee break a few minutes in or fell asleep five minutes from the end.
Don't worry about spoilers as Amazon promises the recaps will be spoiler-free (even for its best releases), so if you do want to go back and watch the bits you missed you won't have to worry about knowing exactly what happened.
How do X-Ray recaps work?
Amazon says X-Ray Recaps are designed to help people catch up if they missed a crucial point in a show, or if they're coming back to a show after a long gap.
They are designed to be a way to see what happened without risking spoilers from an online summary or glimpsing part of the action by rewinding.
Adam Gray, vice president of product at Prime Video explained that the Recaps are 'context-aware' to the time and position in the video.
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He says this allows Prime Video to "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.”
Using custom Amazon AI models trained on the video segments, subtitles and dialogue of the Prime Video library, it can create descriptions of key events, places, times and even conversations. It then applies guardrails to ensure it is spoiler-free and easy to read at a distance.
How to get X-Ray Recaps
X-Ray Recaps are available to anyone with a Prime Video account. Just go to the Prime Video detail page for the show or open the X-Ray experience during playback.
You can pick from a range of recap types including summaries of a current episode, the season so far or a previous season if you're finally watching that delayed release.
For now, it is only available as a beta release to Fire TV customers in the U.S. but Amazon says it will be on a wider range of devices by the end of the year. There are no details on an international release plan.
For now, the best shows to try it on are: "Daisy Jones and the Six", "Mr and Mrs Smith", "Wheel of Time", and "The Boys".
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Fox Tread3 November 5, 2024 - I realize that I should reserve the term "hate" for people and things that do me and mine possible criminal harm. However, I shall say...that I extremely dislike X-Ray on Amazon Prime. If I am not mistaken, not long ago it was necessary to actively select the X-Ray "feature". Now, according to the information I have been able to obtain. It is impossible to turn off X-Ray. Why Amazon Prime thinks this is a good idea is beyond me. Everytime I pause what I am watching, X-Ray will pop up in the far left corner of my screen with info about the actors/actresses that are in the scene. Now... they are pandering to the people that spend more time on their phones than watching what is on their screens. Yes.. I'm old, and decades ago, viewers paid close attention to what they were actually watching on their TVs. Commercial breaks were used for conversation amongst the people watching the film/TV production, getting refreshments, and/or "making a pit stop". Now in the age of "multitasking", people try to do numerous things while "watching" something on their screen or device. One of my theories as to why film and TV productions are so subpar. Is because the entertainment industry knows its audience, and knows that their attention is so divided. That they will accept even the worst possible productions, and actually think they are great.Reply