I guess we’re past the era of “and that’s what you missed on Glee.” Amazon’s Prime Video streamer is adding AI-generated “Video Recaps” to help viewers catch up between seasons of shows, the company announced on Wednesday.
According to Amazon, the feature “utilizes generative AI to create theatrical-quality season recaps with synchronized narration, dialogue, and music.” It will begin rolling out in beta on Wednesday for select Prime Originals, like “Fallout,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” and “Upload.”
Prime Video launched a similar AI-powered feature last year called “X-Ray Recaps,” which summarizes complete seasons, episodes, or parts of episodes — at the time, Amazon said that its AI model had guardrails in place to make sure that these recaps don’t inadvertently share spoilers.
Consumers have become accustomed to these kinds of text-based AI summaries, since they likely see them when their phone summarizes texts, or when they see a (perhaps unwanted) AI summary at the top of their Google results. But these video summaries veer into newer territory, which may appear more obtrusive in the viewing experience than text summaries — or, maybe they’ll be embraced by people who don’t remember what happened on “Bosch.”
Prime Video’s competitors are also exploring how they can integrate generative AI into their products.
YouTube TV, for example, uses a “Key Plays” feature to help viewers catch up on sports games if they start watching while the game is in progress. While it’s a bit imperfect (its algorithm seems to only be able to identify key offensive plays in baseball), the feature helped YouTube TV win its first Technical Emmy Award.
Netflix, meanwhile, is using generative AI on the production side of its business.
Earlier this year, Netflix said it used generative AI in the final footage for the first time in the Argentine show “The Eternaut” to create a scene of a building collapsing. After that, “Happy Gilmore 2” used generative AI to make characters look younger in the film’s opening scene, and the producers of “Billionaires’ Bunker” used it in pre-production to envision wardrobe and set design.
The use of AI in the film industry has sparked much debate, as artists worry that these tools — which sometimes are trained without permission on their work — could endanger their livelihoods. But some argue that tools that speed up tedious busywork in animation or special effects, like Wonder Dynamics, could expand the capacity for artists to create.
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