We’ve all been there. You sit down excitedly to watch a new season of one of your favorite TV shows and it hits you: you don’t quite remember what happened in the previous season. This dynamic is especially common when TV shows have an unusually long wait time between seasons. In light of this, Amazon announced a new feature to address this issue: AI-powered video recaps.
Amazon’s new AI feature is currently in beta and, for now at least, is only available on select Prime Originals. The way the feature works is pretty straightforward. AI software identifies key plot points, character arcs, important scenes, and relevant dialogue for a TV show over a given season. It uses this data to create a concise video overlaid with AI-generated narration and AI-selected music to create a “theatrical-quality visual recap” in order to get viewers up to speed.
Some of the shows that currently support the recap feature include “Fallout,” “Upload,” and “Bosch.” Users can watch an AI-generated recap by tapping the “Recap” button on a show’s details page. As it stands now, the feature is only available when viewing Prime Video via a living room device. I couldn’t get it to work on my Apple TV, which is to say it may currently be exclusive to Amazon devices like the Fire TV Stick. Incidentally, Amazon says the feature will expand to additional devices in the future.
Amazon embraces AI as creators push back
This isn’t the first time Amazon has embraced AI to help summarize TV shows for viewers. Last year, for example, the company introduced X-Ray Recaps, a feature which provides viewers with AI-generated text summaries of “TV shows, single episodes, and even pieces of episodes, all personalized down to the exact minute of where you are watching.”
At a time when AI usage is seeing a lot of backlash from creators, it’s interesting to see Amazon push forward full steam ahead. And while Amazon’s X-Ray Recaps isn’t a feature capable of taking away any jobs, the same can’t be said for Amazon’s AI-powered video recaps. Presumably, video editors are none too pleased with the development.
Meanwhile, creators are seemingly becoming more vocal about their disdain for AI. In case you missed it, the credits that aired after the first episode of Apple TV’s new show “Pluribus” made a point of stating: “This show was made by humans.” Hardly a surprise, “Pluribus” creator Vince Gilligan hasn’t been shy about his feelings when it comes to AI.
“I hate AI,” the “Breaking Bad” creator said during a recent interview with Variety. “AI is the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horses***. It’s basically a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires. I think they’re selling a bag of vapor.”
Despite Gilligan’s reservations, streaming services are increasingly turning to AI, though overall usage remains low. As an example, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos this year confirmed that Netflix used AI to create visuals of a building collapsing in the show “The Eternauts.”
