Handy with Amazon’s new AI-powered Fire TV search

Navigating the vast amount 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 that me, my husband, my 13-year-old daughter, and my 16-year-old son all want to watch together is still a herculean task.

So when Amazon announced its new AI-powered voice search feature for Fire TV at its fall event last year, I was intrigued. With the promise of making searching content easier and smarter, I was hoping it would be the solution to my problems. I’ve had a little time with the new feature, and while it’s promising, like most AI-powered searches right now, it’s just not reliable enough to be all that useful.

The basic idea is that you can use more natural language to ask Alexa to find something for you to watch. Whether 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 show about money laundering set in the mountains?” or “Show we British crime dramas with female leads,” and the voice assistant should help you figure that out. It’s the AI ​​equivalent of channel flipping, only Alexa does the flipping for you.

It’s all powered by a new Large Language Model (LLM) built by Amazon that’s designed to display movie and TV show content using natural language input. It starts rolling out today to Fire TV devices running Fire OS 6 or later. At launch, it’s capable of finding content based on things like theme, genre, plot, actors, and quotes thanks to being trained on data from services like IMDb.

Amazon’s Joshua Park, senior product manager for Fire TV, demonstrated AI search to me at Amazon’s Day 1 headquarters in Seattle earlier this month. He showed me several prompts, including: “Show me a movie where Tom Hanks is a pilot and has to land on the Hudson” (Dirty); “What’s the TV show that mentions Szechuan sauce from McDonald’s?” (Rick and Morty); and “Show me a nature documentary narrated by Obama” (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 useful context to the results, including showing which apps you have to stream the show and whether it’s free for you. But what I want from a more intelligent search service is not something to speed up my memory, but something smart enough to find me something good to watch. I want it to use its vast data set to sift through everything and find quality stuff. I want it to be that old video store salesman from my youth.

When Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, demonstrated the search feature on stage at Amazon’s fall event last year, it was exactly what he promised, saying that using the feature “is like talking to a big friend who’s also the best video store seller in the world. ”

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 then he could continue talking to the assistant to direct him to movies he wouldn’t have to pay for, ones he hadn’t seen yet (or at least weren’t in his Fire TV viewing history— a), the ones that were good for his teenagers, and then finally asking him for context: “We like video games, which one should we choose?” It suggested Scott Pilgrim. Now that it is very useful.

Park told me some sort of detailed back-and-forth is planned for future updates. While trying the current options, I couldn’t get it to go more than two queries before it started to fall apart. It also had a hard time offering more than a few correct answers to broader queries like “Show me the Oscar-winning movies from the 1970s.”

“This is definitely day one for us,” Park explained when I asked him about these restrictions. “We definitely have insight into what we need to do to make it better, so no matter what clients are looking for, we can 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 return the right results. With Fire TV’s new search, I was able to talk to Alexa, including pauses and hms and ers, and she (mostly) understood what I was asking.

But I was mostly disappointed with the results. To see if this might help my family’s viewing situation, I suggested the query “Show me some dark comedies with violence.” (I like romantic comedies and my husband likes horror movies.) It was offered heathers, American Psycho, Pulp Fictionand Barbie. except Barbie completely out of left field, the others were all over the age of 20. Not helpful.

Then I tried something much more specific. We love finding shows we can watch together, so I asked, “Show me TV shows with more than six episodes that are highly rated.” He suggested two shows, both anime. One was rated a nine out of 10 and 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 look up what I thought would be a softball question. What I might have asked the video store clerk: “Show me something good to watch.” The results were… bizarre. His first suggestion was Miss Marple (a classic British detective series that I actually love, but it’s very old), but her second and third options were A curious woman and Super Vixens, which not only looks like soft porn from the 70s but has very bad ratings on IMDB.

Yes, it is indeed still early. Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Aruda reached out after I posted this to say I had issues with “relevance of search results.” during my demonstration are addressed. She noted that the version I was testing was not the one sent to customers today.

I tested AI Search on May 3rd, about three weeks ago, on a Fire Stick at Amazon HQ. I got an update on my Fire Stick this morning, so I was able to repeat the “something good to watch” prompt. I’m happy to say there was no sign of any curious females. Instead, Alexa suggested Dina: The second part, Shogun and Sugar. So it looks like I’m ready for some weekend viewing.

Updated May 30: Added that Amazon reached out after the announcement to note that I was testing 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 encountered have been resolved.