Amazon is infusing Prime Video with AI recommendations and debuting an entirely new interface, all with one fell swoop of an update rolling out for customers globally. We got an exclusive first look at it back in June at Amazon’s space on the MGM Studio Lot, and it brings the service into a more customer-focused lens.
Prime Video is home to a host of original content like The Boys, but it can also be a homescreen to other services – essentially a streaming service that provides access to others, similar to the Apple TV app. Within Prime Video, you can also see content you’ve bought on Amazon digitally or your other subscriptions to services like Paramount Plus, Showtime, or Starz, among others. You can even subscribe to those services via Prime Video.
The whole idea is for Prime Video to make it easier for you to access your favorite content – be it a TV show, movie, documentary, or live sports game – and to provide better content recommendations from all the services you’re linked with.
That’s a tall order, especially as more smart interfaces earmark areas for advertising. While Amazon isn’t making any long-standing promises, this redesigned interface does not feature advertisements, so that’s a win. The ones featured are mostly for Prime benefits.
A redesigned UX with a focus on making content easier to find
The redesign starts at the top. Amazon opted for a pretty clean aesthetic with clear categories – from left to right on a tablet or a smart TV, you’ll see ‘Home’, ‘Movies’, ‘TV’, ‘Sports’, and ‘Live’ by default.
Things get interesting after a space break as the categories rotate in and out, well, all except for the ‘Prime’ tab. If you were watching an MLB game or a show from Paramount Plus, you’d see that up there. This can be handy if you’re watching something, then tab out and want to jump back in while searching for the application. We did ask Amazon if this was customizable, but they confirmed it isn’t. Instead, it is a rotating selection based on what you’ve last used.
Within the Prime tab, you’ll see Amazon’s latest and greatest and recommended content based on what you’ve watched in the past. You’ll also likely encounter offers from Prime, be it exclusive discounts or even a deal on bundling other services here; Amazon billed this a benefit list. When the NFL Season kicks off, you’ll be able to find the live games under ‘Sports’ or ‘Live’, but both of these will be home to other content like 24/7 curated channels, tennis or baseball matches, and a back catalog of highlights or full matches.
Below that, like on Netflix or Disney Plus, is a new ‘hero carousel’, which rotates between content from services you have synced and Prime Video titles. One nice integration is that it is one click to stream whatever is featured.
Better content recommendations
Under that you’ll find rows of recommended content, and Amazon is deploying some AI-powered tools to help find content that is actually interesting and appealing to you. This will also differ based on which profile you’re signed in to, so if you have a family account, your recommendations should look different from those of a child, partner, or another individual. Prime Videos’ recommendation engine is being built from Amazon Bedrock, a tool for creating generative AI experiences. In a demo, we saw that Prime Video is swapping general content clusters based on your services – for instance, ‘Made For You’ under a broader category – to recommended content based on what you have watched previously.
Prime Video will also offer new categories to help you find content based on taste and what is ultra-popular in different regions. Maybe the neatest thing is a more up-front way to know if a piece of content is included with a service you already have or if it requires a separate purchase.
Alongside a slightly different font for a title and description made through an Amazon LLM to make it a bit more brief, you’ll see a shopping bag icon if you need to pay for the content and a logo for the service if it’s not on Prime Video. So, if it’s an episode of ‘Conan O’Brien Must-Go’, you’d see the Max logo. Not to mention, if you’re only interested in content included with Prime Video – aka your Prime membership – there is a whole section dedicated to that.
One notion that kept coming up was building the best streaming app and service, so Prime Video is being pitched as a one-stop-shop, but you’ll also find that Amazon wants to build a sort of content recommendation system and put the focus on its properties, and ever-growing foray into live sports. It’s now at the top, and with more games set to be broadcast this year, it could entice even more folks to jump in.
Whether it’s live content or on-demand, Prime Video is striving to be seamless, from selecting what you want to watch to encountering a clip-free or buffer-free experience, and it has a lot of tools at its disposal to ensure that the stream is a strong one. Amazon even employs AI to help spot issues before they arise, or in their tracks, for content distribution, and depending on where you’re connecting from, it will use a method to determine the best AWS cloud from which to pull the content.
The outlook
I’m eager to see the new experience roll out on my Prime Video to give it a spin, see how the recommended content aligns with my taste, and how much easier it is to jump right into a movie or TV show. Another positive is that there isn’t an upcharge for this redesign; it’s still included with a regular Prime membership at $14.99 / £8.99/ AU$9.99 a month, while ad-free is an additional $2.99 / £2.99/ AU$2.99 a month.
Core features like access to your previously bought library, jumping in for live events, and “X-Ray” for identifying what’s on-screen during an NFL game or a movie still exist. Prime Video will still be available as a standalone app for Android and iOS devices, smart TVs, and streaming boxes.
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jacob.krol@futurenet.com (Jacob Krol)
