Amazon devices head Panos Panay has shared one of his favourite features of Alexa+ – the AI-powered Alexa that the company launched earlier this year. The new feature comes to Fire TV and allows users to skip the search and jump directly to specific scenes in a movie using only voice commands. Panay called it a practical use of AI integrated into the viewing experience. The new capability, integrated with Alexa+, allows users to describe a scene using conversational language, character names, or even memorable quotes, and instantly begin playback at that precise moment on Prime Video.
“One of my favorite Fire TV features just went live. You can now describe a movie scene to Alexa+ and instantly jump straight there on Prime Video. It’s a super practical use of AI that fits right into how people actually watch TV. Proud of the teams who brought this to life and excited to use this one over the holidays,” he said in a post on X. The post also included a video, showing how the feature will work when it rolls out to users.
How Alexa’s scene jump feature works
The core aim of Fire TV’s new feature is to get users to their desired content quickly without them having to search and fast forward. For example, users can say, “Jump to a scene where Bradly Cooper sings song on stage” and it will go exactly in that scene. The technology works across Amazon services, the company said. Alexa+ can identify the correct movie even if the user doesn’t mention the title.
The AI utilizes Prime Video’s X-Ray data, along with visual understanding and movie captions, to process the characters, plot, and action to pinpoint the exact moment requested. The company says that the process is powered by Amazon Bedrock and utilises various large language models including Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude to execute the jump in seconds.
The scene jump feature currently works with thousands of movie titles available on Prime Video, including tens of thousands of indexed scenes. Access requires the movie to be included with a Prime membership or to have been purchased or rented by the user through Prime Video. Amazon plans to expand the capability to include more movies, more scenes, and TV shows soon.
