TL;DR
- Alexa users can now access specific scenes in Prime Video movies by just describing them.
- Amazon first teased this functionality earlier this year, and it’s exclusive to Alexa Plus.
- Initial support is only for movies, but Amazon’s working on compatibility with TV shows, as well.
This year marked a turning point for two of the biggest smart home ecosystems around, with both Google and Amazon embracing next-gen AI-fueled platforms with the introduction of Alexa Plus and Google Home Premium with Gemini. But even as both go down these similar roads, we’re already identifying some key areas where they differ. And right now, we bet a lot of Google TV viewers are wishing that Gemini would learn to pull off one of Alexa Plus’s latest tricks.
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When Amazon was first showing off Alexa Plus back in February, some of the most impressive feats it demonstrated involved media playback. For instance, users could go right from listening to a song, to asking Alexa Plus what movie featured a notable scene with that song, to watching that very scene. This week the final link in that chain is ready for you to try at home, as Amazon shares that Alexa Plus on Fire TV now lets you describe scenes in movies and can jump directly to them in Prime Video.
That’s pretty cool, and in the examples Amazon provides, Alexa Plus is able to recognize everything from general descriptions of the action, to moments when characters quote specific lines. Right now, thousands of movies are supported, with tens of thousands of scenes indexed, and that number’s only set to grow. For the moment, this only works with movies, but access should expand to TV shows soon.
Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
Great for Alexa Plus, sure, but where’s Google with something similar? Back when the company was getting ready to announce Home Premium I actually asked a couple Google employees on the Home team just that, mentioning Amazon’s song-to-movie-scene demo.
Surprisingly, it didn’t sound like anything remotely resembling this was on the horizon — and certainly, we haven’t since see Google confirm any plans of the sort. That’s a shame, because Gemini is full of potential, yet Google doesn’t seem nearly as interested as Amazon does in using its AI to enhance our entertainment experiences. Gemini updates for Google TV boxes have been slow to arrive, and while Gemini’s happy to recommend a new show, for this kind of deep access of scenes, it looks like we’ll just have to turn to Alexa Plus for the time being.
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