I dislike recaps. Not as much as precaps, which give you a summary of what you are about to see, but still. Whenever they come up, I immediately activate the skip button to get past them.
Amazon is now experimenting with AI to improve recaps for viewers on Amazon Prime Video. The feature, which has launched for Prime Video customers in the United States, is part of the service’s X-Ray feature.
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Amazon calls the feature X-Ray Recaps; it is designed specifically to help customers who forgot where they left off. While that may not happen when you binge-watch a TV show or season, it may happen when you pause watching a show for weeks or months.
Amazon says:
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.”
I have no idea how well this works. I do not use Prime Video, but it would be interesting to know if this works better than the regular recaps that you get.
Amazon says that recaps are only available for select MGM Studios Original series at the time.
To use the feature, select the recap icon on the TV shows starting page. There you get options to get a recap of the current episode, current season, or previous season.
The ability to get full season recaps could be helpful. The option to get a recap up to the minute you watched the show seems to be missing though.
In the future, Amazon could very well link these recaps to a customer’s viewing habits or purchases. Guesswork.
You may check out Amazon’s post on its About Amazon website for images and additional information on the feature.
What is your take on this new feature? Would you use it or ignore it? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
I had bad experience with Amazon AI on shopping side. It gives wrong information.
I do not trust AI from any company for general or important information. Their databases are based on Reddit and Quora information (especially Google) and Reddit is nuts and pure fantasy.
When I actually needed something practical (I wanted different AIs to write a few simple scripts to auto-click on popups on popular sites), those autogenerated scripts never work.
I think that even worse than recaps are voiceovers. I thoroughly detest somebody giving me a running commentary while I’m trying to watch a film and which I can’t turn off. A friend of mine recommended a brazilian movie to me recently called Elite Squad which had a voiceover running throughout the whole movie. After 45 minutes of this crap I ejected the DVD and threw it in the bin.
Anyway, I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime since it would only apply to the Netherlands and Belgian films and TV which don’t interest at all.
“Dominoes uses AI to harrass employees at work!”
I am not joking. I just picked up a pizza this weekend and it was delayed because someone had placed a very large order just before me, with the AI phone bot I should add.
While sitting waiting for my Pizza to bake I repeatedly heard this loud voice over a hidden sound system politely berating the employess for not working fast enough. When asked they replied it was “non stop, all day”.
While sitting I also noticed several high resolution AI security cameras pointing at the employee work stations. Not at the cash register, not at the customer area, at the employees. I recognized the cameras because I use them on the outside of my house.