Amazon is trialling a never-before-seen feature to Fire TV viewers across the United States — and it solves one of the biggest headaches when returning to a favourite show after an extended break.
Dubbed X-Ray Recap, it leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate a personalised summary of television shows, helping you catch up on everything you’ve forgotten — from a single episode, to multiple seasons — without encountering spoilers, before you return to the latest episode.
Some broadcasters offer a short recap of earlier episodes or seasons before the start of a new episode, while YouTube is packed with videos that promise to remind you of the most important plotlines ahead of a popular show returning to screens. So, why would you want to use X-Ray Recap instead?
For those able to beta test the incoming feature, Amazon has added a new “Recap” button to its show listings, letting viewers generate a brand-new summary of a specific episode or season to get them back up to speed
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Well, since Amazon is using its complex AI models to generate the recap just for you, it can be incredibly personalised and specific.
Whether you’re a few minutes into an episode, halfway through a season, or took a break from watching a series and need a refresher, X-Ray Recap promises to deliver short textual snippets of key cliffhangers, character-driven plot points, and other details that can be accessed at any point in your viewing experience.
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If you ducked out and missed a few minutes within an episode, X-Ray Recap will ensure you’re up-to-date with what happened in the scenes that you missed too.
X-Ray Recaps builds upon Prime Video’s existing X-Ray features, which help viewers dive deeper into what they’re watching by offering trivia and information about the cast, soundtrack, production details, and more. When you pause a show, film, or documentary on Prime Video, Amazon lets you browse additional details about everyone on-screen at that moment, including previous credits, the music playing in the background, and more.
Speaking about the new addition, Vice President of product at Prime Video, Adam Gray said: “Prime Video product and technology teams work relentlessly behind the scenes to enhance customers’ viewing experience, and with the creation of X-Ray Recaps, we’re directly addressing a common problem customers face when streaming content: forgetting where they left off.
“With this context-aware functionality, Prime Video will 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.”
Teams at Amazon have added specific guardrails to the AI models — known as Amazon SageMaker — to ensure summaries remain spoiler-free and concise. X-Ray Recap is designed to generate detailed descriptions of key events, places, times and conversations to help viewers quickly resume their viewing experience.
Amazon has instructed its Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to ensure summaries are concise and spoiler-free. These can be generated from several places in the Prime Vidoe interface, including as you’re watching a show
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It can be accessed from the title screen of the show on Prime Video or when paused within an episode.
The system offers flexibility in how much content is recapped, allowing viewers to choose between full season summaries or specific episode details.
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While it’s currently being beta tested by Fire TV viewers in the United States, Amazon hopes to roll-out X-Ray Recap to more devices and countries in the coming weeks and months.
For now, it’s limited to Amazon MGM Studios original series, including popular shows like The Boys, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Upload, Daisy Jones & The Six, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and The Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power.
