- 'AI Topics' analyzes your viewing to come up with recommendations
- Categories and descriptions are created by a large language model
- US only, and currently a beta test
Amazon has come up with a modern solution to an age-old problem: how do you find something to watch when there are so many options? It's not exclusively a streaming problem but the huge amount of choice on the best streaming services has made it considerably worse – so Amazon wants to fix it with the power of AI.
The new feature is called 'AI Topics' and for the moment it's exclusive to US Prime Video users. It won't be on every US TV or streaming box, though as it's a limited beta release for "select customers".
If you're one of those customers you should see the new 'AI Topics' section when you scroll down. From there, you can get some AI-powered help to find your next favorite best Prime Video show or best Prime Video movie.
What does Amazon AI topics actually do?
Amazon's system analyzes your viewing to create a selection of recommendations from Prime Video's vast catalog based on that history, organized into individual topics. You can watch a recommended title by clicking on it, or explore the topic in more detail to refine the recommendations.
'AI Topics' will also generate descriptive names for the topics it identifies. Amazon gives examples including 'mind-bending sci-fI' and 'fantasy quests'. Other topics might include classic comedies, 'spine-chilling suspense' or 'frontier justice'. And when a topic is generated, 'AI Topics' will also generate related topics to widen the recommendations a little further.
Here's how that works in practice. If you watch a lot of thrilling movies, Amazon's AI might create a topic of 'Thrilling Character Journeys' featuring the likes of Jack Ryan, The Batman, Inception, Memento and The Shawshank Redemption. They're all very different movies but you can see the thread the AI has used to select them.
Below that you've got the additional topics, which just appear as clickable phrases: 'Spider Universe', 'Real Life Transformations', 'Vengeance Thrillers', 'Dark Delights' and so on. And immediately below that there are more recommendations for the current topic, in this example Se7en, Thirteen Lives, Widow and Joker.
You might quibble with some of the choices here, or the descriptions – aren't most movies supposed to be 'Thrilling Character Journeys'? – but it's a rare streaming subscriber who hasn't spent far too much time scrolling, and this should make that a bit less likely.
AI is clearly going to be an increasing part of our entertainment experience. So if Amazon's looking for more ideas, here's one: AI-powered ad placement. Imagine ads that happen like TV ones used to, with the ads appearing at sensible times rather than just randomly interrupting key scenes with: 'hello [I don't care if the hero is gasping his last] buy a kindle'. Just a thought...
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