We’ve all done it. No matter how invested you may be in the third-season finale of Lost, life somehow gets in the way and the rest of the adventure falls away, forever. Getting back into the series is nigh impossible without a full-scale rewatch to clue you up on the intricacies being woven, but who has the time?
Exactly. What you need is an X-Ray. Prime Video’s new AI feature aims to catch you up without the rewatch.
No more excuses
Called ‘X-Ray Recaps‘, the idea is to use generative artificial intelligence to fill you in on whatever series you’re busy with, creating “brief, easy-to-digest summaries of full seasons of TV shows, single episodes, and even pieces of episodes.” That last bit might seem unnecessary (and it is), but Amazon hopes users will seek out Recaps after heading to the bathroom rather than simply pausing or rewinding the series.
It’s all personalised down to each user’s profile, taking into account the very minute you’re currently stopped at. While we don’t see much use for Recaps mid-episode, we’re all for detailed summaries to remind you of “key cliffhangers, character-driven plot points, and other details” during the two-year wait between seasons of Invincible.
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Recaps gets its AI smarts it needs from Amazon Bedrock and “custom AI models” trained on Amazon SageMaker, analysing both video and subtitle dialogue to craft summaries for its users. Amazon ensures it’ll all be spoiler-free, and keep the text generated short and to the point. To find Recaps, open the currently existing X-Ray feature from a series’ page or during playback and select the type of recap you’d like.
X-Ray Recaps launch today in the U.S. to customers watching on a Fire TV device – though the feature only works on Amazon MGM Studios Original series, such as The Boys or The Wheel of Time. Amazon mentioned that other devices would receive support before the end of the year, but failed to mention when it might expand to non-Amazon shows, nor when it would make it out of the U.S. and into SA.