Amazon Prime Video has just beta-launched a new feature called X-Ray Recaps that uses generative AI to refresh viewers’ memories about what they’ve been watching. 

Creating a frictionless way for viewers to catch up on their shows, and also encouraging them to spend more time on Prime Video, the new feature creates brief summaries of full show seasons, episodes and even episode segments. The summaries are personalized to the minute a viewer stops watching, and they offer reminders about cliffhangers and key plot points, eliminating the need to catch up by rewatching older content. 

Although the feature is only in beta right now, Amazon began offering the service to Fire TV customers in the US yesterday. Currently, they can use X-Ray Recaps on all Amazon MGM Studios Originals. 

Recaps builds on Prime Video’s existing X-Ray feature, which provides concurrent info about soundtrack titles playing in the background and the cast & crew behind the scenes viewers are watching. 

This new feature is meant to address the common problem of viewers forgetting where they left off, says Adam Gray, VP of product at Prime Video. The larger goal is to keep audiences from losing interest when it’s been a while since the last season ended, for example. 

X-Ray Recaps is powered by Amazon Bedrock, a service for building AI applications. It analyzes video segments, dialogue and subtitles to generate details that are spoiler-free and concise. 

Image courtesy of Amazon.