At Amazon’s Sept. 2023 devices event, myriad devices and updates to everything from Kindles to Alexa were announced, and plenty of Fire TV news in between. Maybe most important, though, was an upgrade that folks with a Fire TV Stick or Cube would benefit from – vastly improved search with Alexa.
Well, that feature is finally seeing the light of day as Amazon is starting to roll out the improved search experience to eligible Fire TV devices. This means you’ll be able to ask Alexa what movie has a specific line you remember or even something broader, like a funny comedy set in NYC that’s for the whole family.
Like the promise of Project Astra or OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o, Amazon wants Alexa to be as human as possible… at least in terms of entertainment recommendations.
An entertainment LLM for Alexa
If you’re in the United States in English with a Fire TV device – stick, cube, or even TV – with FireOS 6 later, Amazon’s started the rollout of the new search experience. This means that you may see the new experience and can ask for content more naturally from today on – the rollout officially began on May 30, 2024.
Using the new search experience is as simple as talking with Alexa; Amazon notes that you can search by topic, genre, plot, or quote. For example, you could ask what movie the line “I have a bad feeling about this” appears in or, as Amazon shared, “life is like a box of chocolates.” The options are endless, and using Alexa on a Fire TV should be much more useful.
When you’re with a friend or family member and deciding what to watch, you can ask for a specific type of film by topic, genre, or plot. Asking for a “mystery movie set in the old west” or “an action flick that involves time travel” will yield personalized results, mainly from the services you’re signed into. Showing results that you can stream at no additional charge and that better fit with the original prompt could solve a real headache for some folks.
Amazon notes that searching on Fire TV is powered by an in-house developed large language model (LLM). This means that it pulls from a database and cross-references it with your taste – or at least what the Fire TV knows from a user profile – and the streaming services you’re signed into. That includes Amazon Prime Video and third-party libraries, among other services.
It’s a nice, free update that’s been a long time coming and will hopefully make it easier to find content to watch, be it movies or TV shows, on Fire TV streamers. Who knows, Google may try to match this with a Gemini-infused Google TV, or with rumored upgrades to Siri, Apple may try to up the Apple TV experience.
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