AMAZON has injected its Fire TV voice assistant with an even bigger dose of artificial intelligence (AI) in a bid to cut time spent scrolling.
It means Fire TV and Fire Stick users can search for movies and shows much faster than before, even when they’ve forgotten the title.
“Whether your next TV show is on the tip of your tongue, or if you have no idea where to start, Fire TV’s new search can help you find what you want to watch,” Amazon said in its announcement last night.
The average viewer spends over 10 minutes searching for options to watch, according to a Nielsen report published last year.
Amazon Fire Stick owners can shrink that time by giving customers personalised suggestions, in a way that’s more conversational than before.
“You can ask Alexa to search for streaming content recommendations in the same way you might ask a friend with encyclopedic knowledge about TV shows and movies, using complex or nuanced language to ask for options based on topic, genre, plot, character, actor, and even by quotes,” according to Amazon.
Some example prompts include: “Show me psychological thrillers with surprise endings” or “What movie has the line, ‘You’re killing me Smalls?’”.
Recommendations will be contextual to the prompt, will consider your watch history and include options not just from Prime Video, but the likes of Disney+ and Netflix too.
Using an Amazon-built large language model, Fire TV’s voice search has been “rebuilt from the bottom up,” Amazon’s Alexa & Fire TV VP Daniel Rausch told Lowpass.
The AI upgrade comes a decade after Fire TV’s voice assistant was first unveiled.
Amazon was planning to unveil more blockbuster AI features for Fire TV’s 10th anniversary – but may have been overly ambitious.
Amazon’s Joshua Park, senior manager of product for Fire TV, told The Verge that the missing capabilities are planned for future updates.
The AI update will first roll out to users in the US “and only in English. “in the coming weeks,” says Amazon.
Though it will be pushed out worldwide to all eligible devices after.
Eligible devices include Fire TV gadgets running Fire OS 6 and later, which includes all models released in 2017 and later.
How to use
Users can use the voice assistant to search by topic, genre, plot or quote.
Try some of Amazon’s suggestions:
- “Find the mystery movie set on a private island.”
- “Show me movies where people get sucked into a video game.”
- “What movie has the line, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates?’”
- “Find me the show where someone says, ‘Winter is coming.’”
- “Find Korean horror films.”
- “Find me medical drama shows.”
- “Find sci-fi TV shows about time travel.”
- “Show me classic comedy series about roommates.”