Prime Video's AI-powered recaps will help you catch up on shows you started and forgot

Looks like Amazon has decided to suck all the fun out of watching those “Everything you need to know before watching…” recap videos on YouTube. Amazon’s Prime Video is introducing a new generative AI-powered feature designed to get you up to speed on a show without having to leave the platform. The new tool, dubbed “X-Ray Recaps,” can create text summaries of “full seasons of TV shows, single episodes, and even pieces of episodes.”

The company’s official blog post states that X-Ray Recaps analyzes video segments, subtitles, and dialogue to generate detailed descriptions of key events, characters, and plot points. Guardrails are reportedly in place to ensure these AI-generated summaries don’t reveal too much, keeping major twists under wraps.

This new feature builds on Prime Video’s existing X-Ray service, which offers trivia and insights about the cast, soundtrack, and production. According to Adam Gray, VP of Product at Prime Video, the company hopes X-Ray Recaps will solve the issue of viewers forgetting where they left off, saying it’s intended to let them “rediscover why they fell in love with a series.”

For now, X-Ray Recaps is in beta and only available on Fire TV devices in the US, specifically for Amazon MGM Studios Original series. The company plans to expand access to other devices by year’s end, potentially opening the door for a broader rollout.

While the concept seems promising, it remains to be seen how effective these AI-generated recaps will be in practice. Specifically, there’s room for doubt as to how well the AI will capture the essence of a show. However, if Google’s AI summaries in Google Search are anything to go by, we can at least expect some entertaining literal interpretations and meme-worthy content to come out of this new feature.