Navigating the sheer volume of streaming content available today can be a full-time job. Recommendations from friends, blog posts and TikToks of movies I haven’t thought about in years all help. But finding something myself, my husband, my 13-year-old daughter, and my 16-year-old son all want to watch together is still a difficult task.
So when Amazon announced the new AI-powered voice search feature for Fire TV at its fall event last year, I was intrigued. With its promise to make searching for content easier and smarter, I hoped it would be the solution to my problems. I’ve now had some hands-on time with the new feature, and while it shows promise, like a lot of AI research right now, it’s just not reliable enough to be that useful.
The basic idea is that you can use more natural language to ask Alexa to find you something to watch. If you have a show in mind but can’t remember the name or aren’t sure what you’re in the mood for, tap the Alexa button on your Fire TV remote and ask questions like, “What’s that money laundering show on in the mountains?” or “Tell me British crime dramas with female leads,” and the voice assistant should help you figure it out. It’s the AI equivalent of channel surfing, only Alexa is doing the flipping for you.
All of this is being powered by a new Amazon-built Big Language Model (LLM) designed to display movie and TV show content using natural language inputs. It’s starting to roll out today to eligible Fire TV devices running Fire OS 6 or higher. For starters, it’s able to find content based on things like theme, genre, plot points, actors and quotes, thanks to training on data from services like IMDb.
Amazon’s Joshua Park, senior product manager for Fire TV, showed me AI research at Amazon Day 1 headquarters in Seattle earlier this month. He showed me several questions, including: “Show me the movie where Tom Hanks is a pilot and has to land in the Hudson” (Sully); “What is the TV show that mentions Szechuan sauce from McDonald’s?” (Rick and Morty); and “Show me the nature documentary Obama aired” (Our Great National Parks). Alexa did a good job with all of this – but while it’s neat, it’s all stuff I can Google on my phone while sitting on the couch.
Amazon adds some helpful context to the results, telling you which apps you have that can stream the show and whether it’s free for you. But what I want from a smarter search service isn’t something to jog my memory, but something smart enough to find me something good to watch. I want him to use his extensive data to sift through the gist and find me the quality stuff. I want it to be that old school video store clerk from my youth.
When Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa and Fire TV, demonstrated the search feature on stage at Amazon’s fall event last year, that’s literally what he promised, saying that using the feature is “like talking to a great friend who is also the world’s best video store clerk. ”
His demo included a much more capable Alexa than the one I saw in Seattle. He asked Alexa to “find me some action movies,” and was then able to continue talking to the assistant to turn him into movies he wouldn’t have to pay for, ones he hadn’t seen yet ( or at least hadn’t seen” in his Fire TV viewing history), the ones that were good for his teens, and finally ask him a context hint: “We like video games, which should we go ?” she suggested Scott Pilgrim. now that it is very useful.
I could have a conversation with Alexa, including pauses, ums, and ms, and she (mostly) understood what I asked for
Park tells me some kind of in-depth back-and-forth is planned for future updates. While testing the actual abilities, I couldn’t get it to go past two questions before it started to fall apart. It also tried to provide more than two correct answers to broader questions like “Tell me Oscar-winning movies from the 1970s.”
“It’s certainly the first day for us,” Park explained when I asked about these limits. “We definitely have a picture of what we need to do to improve it, so that no matter what the customer is looking for, we’re able to find the right content for them.”
What it does do well is improve the current state of Alexa voice search, which – like most voice commands – requires specific nomenclature to produce the right results. With the new Fire TV search, I could chat with Alexa, including pauses and greetings, and she (mostly) understood what I asked for.
But I was mostly disappointed with the results. To see if it might help with my family’s viewing situation, I suggested the “Show me some violent dark comedies” request. (I like romantic comedies and my husband likes horror movies.) It was offered Heathers, American Psycho, Pulp FictionAND Barbie. Except this Barbie being completely out of left field, the others were all over 20 years old. Not helpful.
Next, I tried something much more specific. We like to find shows we can watch together, so I asked, “Tell me the top-rated TV series with more than six episodes.” He suggested two shows, both anime. One was rated a nine out of 10, but the other was a five out of 10. Even for an avid anime fan, that’s not a great score.
At this point, I decided to go for what I thought would be a softball question. The kind of thing I might have asked the video store clerk: “Tell me something good to watch.” The results were… weird. Her first suggestion was Miss Marple (a classic British detective show that I actually love, but it’s too old), but his second and third options were Curious women AND Super Vixens, which not only appear to be soft-core porn from the 70s, but have very poor ratings on IMDB.
Yes, it really is still early. Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Aruda reached out after I published this to say about the issues I’ve experienced with the “relevance of search results” during my demonstration are addressed. She noted that the version I tested was not the one sent to customers today.
I tested AI search on May 3, about three weeks ago, on a Fire Stick at Amazon headquarters. I got the update on my Fire Stick this morning, so I was able to repeat the “something good to watch” question. I am happy to say that there was no sign of the curious women. Instead, Alexa suggested Dune: Part Two, Shogun AND Sugar. So it looks like I may be set for my weekend viewing.
Updated May 30: It added that Amazon reached out after the release to note that I tested an earlier version of the search feature, not the one that ships to users today, and that the company is optimistic that the issues I experienced have been resolved.