According to The Verge, Amazon has launched a new AI-powered feature for Fire TV that lets users jump to specific movie scenes by describing them to Alexa Plus. The feature, first announced in September, works with thousands of Prime Video movies by understanding scene descriptions, character names, and famous quotes. Users can ask to find scenes like “the card scene in Love Actually” or a moment where a character says a specific line. It utilizes AI models including Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude and can identify movies even without the title in the query. Currently, it works with indexed scenes in select movies purchased, rented, or streamed via a Prime membership. Amazon says it will soon expand to include more scenes and TV shows.
The End of Manual Scrubbing?
This is a clever, almost obvious quality-of-life upgrade. We’ve all been there, fast-forwarding and rewinding through a movie trying to find that one perfect scene. It’s a minor pain point, but a real one. Amazon‘s move here is less about groundbreaking AI and more about practical utility. They’re taking their existing X-Ray data—which already knows who’s on screen and what song is playing—and supercharging it with conversational AI. The real trick is that it can figure out the movie from your vague description, which is where those Anthropic Claude models probably come in handy. It’s a feature designed to make you stay within the Fire TV and Prime Video ecosystem. Why would you hop over to YouTube to find a clip when Alexa can just take you there?
Broader Implications and a Skeptical Eye
So, what’s the trajectory here? This feels like the first step toward a truly semantic, searchable video library. The immediate future is clearly more scenes and TV shows, as Amazon promised. But look further out. Could this tech eventually be applied to live sports? “Alexa, show me every third-down stop by the defense in the fourth quarter.” That’s the dream. Or what about user-generated content? The licensing and indexing headaches would be immense, but the capability is fascinating.
Here’s the thing, though. I’m skeptical about the “thousands of movies” claim. How deep does the indexing really go? Is it just major plot points and famous quotes, or can it find that weird, quiet moment in the background of a cafe scene? The limitation to purchased/rented/Prime content is also a huge asterisk. This is a walled garden feature, through and through. It’s a great perk for the Prime faithful, but it’s also a stark reminder that your digital purchases are often locked to a single platform’s capabilities. Still, as a pure convenience play, it’s hard to argue with. It just makes the platform stickier, which is exactly what Amazon wants.
