Amazon Rolls Out AI-Powered Search Features To Fire TVs: What You Need To Know

Amazon.com Inc AMZN looks to wield artificial intelligence (AI) to best its rivals in today’s streaming environment.

What Happened: The Seattle-based e-commerce giant confirmed that its Alexa-powered AI feature will be implemented within Fire TV’s search.

Amazon’s Fire Stick competes with Roku Inc‘s ROKU various streaming devices. It also rivals Apple Inc‘s AAPL Apple TV and Alphabet Inc‘s GOOGL GOOG Google Chromecast.

In a post on its website on Thursday, Amazon cited the importance of letting users spend more time watching rather than searching.

“This new Fire TV search experience is powered by an Amazon-built large language model (LLM), which enables customers to ask Alexa for personalized TV show and movie recommendations using natural language,” the post said. “These recommendations are contextual, personalized for you, and will include choices from your Prime Video or other streaming subscription libraries, so you know which ones are free to you.”

Amazon provided examples of prompts that Alexa could answer:

• “Find sci-fi TV shows about time travel.”
• "Find Korean horror films."
• "Find the mystery movie set on a private island."
• “What movie has the line, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates?’"

The features have begun to roll out to U.S. customers on select Fire TV devices; wider availability will arrive within the coming weeks.

Amazon previously hinted at the features at an event in September.

Why it Matters: Streaming and non-streaming companies have raced to add additional features to their platforms powered by artificial intelligence.

While the additions have the markets optimistic, the features themselves have not received unanimous praise.

For example, Google AI Overviews feature for Google Search has received backlash; some users reported wildly inaccurate answers to their search queries.

AMZN Price Action: Amazon traded at $180.12, down 1.04% at time of publication.

Now Read: Netflix Releases Second Engagement Report: Everything You Need To Know

Image: Amazon