Amazon Prime Video Introduces AI-Generated Video Recaps for Original Series

Amazon's Prime Video is getting AI-generated Video Recaps for some TV shows | TechCrunch

I guess we're past the era of "and that's what you missed on Glee." Amazon's Prime Video streamer is adding AI-generated "Video Recaps" to help viewers catch up between seasons of shows, the company announced on Wednesday. According to Amazon, the feature "utilizes generative AI to create theatrical-quality season recaps with synchronized narration, dialogue, and music." It will begin rolling out in beta on Wednesday for select Prime Originals, like "Fallout," "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan," and "Upload." Prime Video launched a similar AI-powered feature last year called "X-Ray Recaps," which summarizes complete seasons, episodes, or parts of episodes -- at the time, Amazon said that its AI model had guardrails in place to make sure that these recaps don't inadvertently share spoilers. Consumers have become accustomed to these kinds of text-based AI summaries, since they likely see them when their phone summarizes texts, or when they see a (perhaps unwanted) AI summary at the top of their Google results. But these video summaries veer into newer territory, which may appear more obtrusive in the viewing experience than text summaries -- or, maybe they'll be embraced by people who don't remember what happened on "Bosch." Prime Video's competitors are also exploring how they can integrate generative AI into their products. YouTube TV, for example, uses a "Key Plays" feature to help viewers catch up on sports games if they start watching while the game is in progress. While it's a bit imperfect (its algorithm seems to only be able to identify key offensive plays in baseball), the feature helped YouTube TV win its first Technical Emmy Award. Netflix, meanwhile, is using generative AI on the production side of its business. Earlier this year, Netflix said it used generative AI in the final footage for the first time in the Argentine show "The Eternaut" to create a scene of a building collapsing. After that, "Happy Gilmore 2" used generative AI to make characters look younger in the film's opening scene, and the producers of "Billionaires' Bunker" used it in pre-production to envision wardrobe and set design. The use of AI in the film industry has sparked much debate, as artists worry that these tools -- which sometimes are trained without permission on their work -- could endanger their livelihoods. But some argue that tools that speed up tedious busywork in animation or special effects, like Wonder Dynamics, could expand the capacity for artists to create.

Amazon is using AI to create video recaps of its biggest streaming shows

Amazon Prime Video is testing another new generative AI-powered feature to help catch you up on a show you've been watching before starting a new season. Video Recaps uses AI to identify a show's important plot points and create a short but "theatrical-quality" summary video that combines a selection of clips with music, dialogue, and narration. The Video Recaps feature is being rolled out starting this week in beta on some English-language Prime Original series including Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Upload, Bosch, The Rig, and Fallout (ahead of season two's premiere on December 17th, 2025). Amazon says available recaps, including the text-based X-Ray Recaps it introduced a year ago, will be accessible through a recap button on the detail page when a "customer navigates to the next season of a supported series." At launch they're limited to "living room" Fire TV devices, but will expand to additional devices in the coming months. The feature first "analyzes a season's key plot points and character arcs to deeply understand the most pivotal moments that will resonate with viewers." The AI then selects video clips and stitches them together with audio that includes sound effects and an "overarching AI-generated voiceover narration." The length of the summaries will vary depending on the show, but in one photo shared in a blog post a season three recap of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan appears to be three minutes long. The feature could be a useful way to refresh your memory for shows with especially long gaps between seasons. But does Amazon really need to use AI to create these summaries and open the door for inaccuracies that could cause confusion as you dive into a new season? Making Video Recaps available for every season of every show available on Prime could potentially justify the use of AI, but there's fewer than 20 original drama series on the platform, and this rollout doesn't even include all of them. Is it really that hard to get a human being to watch Citadel?

Forgot the Plot? Prime Video's New AI-Generated Video Recaps Will Fill You In

With so many shows spread across different streaming platforms, it's easy to lose track of what happened. You might forget key plot points, character arcs, or major twists by the time a series returns. To help get you up to speed, Prime Video is rolling out AI-powered video recaps. The Recap button appears in the details page of a supported show. When selected, subscribers will be able to choose from two types of recaps: video or text-based. While the AI-generated video recaps have just begun rolling out this week, text-based summaries have been available since last year. The streamer's video recaps won't just be a series of clips cut out from episodes. The AI will instead identify key plot points, find matching clips, and pair them with an AI-generated voiceover narration. Wherever necessary, the AI will also add audio effects, dialogue snippets, and music. The final output will be "a theatrical-quality visual recap," Amazon says. At launch, the feature will support select English-language Original shows in the US, such as Bosch, Fallout, The Rig, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, and Upload. However, it will only work on your living room device; support for additional devices will arrive in the coming months. AI-generated recaps are becoming a growing trend. Earlier this year, Samsung added support for Copilot on its TVs, allowing users to ask for, among other things, spoiler-free recaps of shows. Spotify also added a similar recap feature for audiobooks last week.

Amazon adds AI-generated video recaps for select Prime Video shows

If the idea of a custom-made "previously on" video for every show you watch is attractive to you, Amazon is taking steps to make it happen. The company has announced that it'll now include AI-generated "Video Recaps" for select series on Prime Video so it's easier to hop back into a show after taking a break. The feature expands on text-based X-Ray Recaps the company started experimenting with in 2024, and the Kindle Recaps it already offers for some series sold through the Kindle Store. Amazon's Video Recaps combine clips, synchronized narration, select dialogue, music and sound effects into a short video that refreshes you on the characters and plot of a show. You can access the recaps through a new Recaps button on a show's page. Clicking it will either pull up a text-based X-Ray Recap or a Video Recap, depending on what Amazon's generated. At least for now, if you're interested in seeing a Video Recap for yourself, Amazon says the feature is available in beta for Fallout, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Upload, Bosch and The Rig. Recaps are essentially a repackaged version of the summarizing skill that companies have decided AI excels at. Amazon's Video Recaps are decidedly more complex than an email summary, but the basic premise is the same. Adding the feature to media apps and devices, as Amazon and Spotify have done, seems like low-hanging fruit that other companies will pursue. AI-generated recaps aren't without their detractors, though. Many indie authors were against Kindle Recaps because of their potential to misrepresent the plots and characters of books. The same possibility could theoretically exist for Video Recaps, as well.

Prime Video makes it easier to catch up on shows with new AI Video Recaps

With shows taking more time to come out between seasons, it's sometimes hard to remember what happened in the last one. Some shows include recaps ahead of the new season to get you up to speed, but other times, you're left going back on your own to see if you can piece together the things you missed or may have just forgotten. It looks like Amazon understands this kind of frustration, and is now introducing Video Recaps for its own shows (via TechCrunch). Now, what makes this a bit more unique from your standard recap is that these will be produced using AI, which may or may not work depending on how well these recaps are received. A good idea that will need excellent execution Amazon shares that the technology will "identify a show's most important plot points, combining them with synchronized voice narration, dialogue snippets, and music to create a visual summary that prepares viewers for the new season." This isn't Amazon's first time dabbling with this kind of tech either, with the brand's X-Ray Recaps delivering the same kind of information, although just in text format. For Prime Video users, this feature will be easy to spot, with a new recap button being on the home page of supported shows and movies. For now, it will only be available when viewing supported shows and movies on home streaming devices. So, if you have a Fire Stick or similar device, we recommend looking out for this feature. As far as how Amazon makes it happen, well, it "analyzes a season's key plot points and character arcs to deeply understand the most pivotal moments" first, then it utilizes AI in order to create a recap that includes video clips that are paired with "audio effects, dialogue snippets, and music." Apparently, there's also going to be voiceover that will be AI generated as well. The feature will be available to Prime Video members in the US first. And since this will be a beta rollout, there's always the chance that it might not get a full launch depending on how things go. However, we suspect that once it gets things tweaked, Amazon will release this feature in full, and it will eventually roll it out to other countries as well. It's unclear how something like this will be received, but it's good that Amazon is at least being transparent about what it's doing. AI has become a hot topic over the past few years, and whether use of it is disclosed or not, there's still a stigma attached to using it as a creative tool. With the way things are going, we may even see AI-generated ads on Prime Video in the near future.

Amazon is trialing using AI to generate recaps for some of your favorite Prime Video TV shows

This article is part of TechRadar's AI Week 2025. Covering the basics of artificial intelligence, we'll show you how to get the most from the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, alongside in-depth features, news, and the main talking points in the world of AI. We've already seen some of the best streaming services integrate AI-powered functionality and features into how they recommend content, and even into the writing of show, movie, and documentary descriptions. Now, though, Prime Video has set its sights on using AI to help us catch up between seasons - at least in the United States - for select original content in a beta trial that's rolling out now. In 2024, Amazon first dipped its toes into AI-generated content with spoiler-free, compact descriptions of plot points for shows; now, though, it'll use AI to cut together a 'Video Recap' to help bridge that gap between seasons. Essentially, when you click 'Video Recap' on an eligible show's page, it will present a roughly three-minute recap of the show. In the background, before you request, the AI will get to work, analyze the show, identify major plot points, and get a sense of the arcs of the main characters. The AI then cuts together the best video clips from the season and stitches them together with AI-generated voiceover narration that plays over what will likely be a few-minute recap. That's not an easy lift, as it's essentially stitching together the major plot points and combining them into a quick video that contains custom voice narration over visuals from the show - including dialogue - and adding music. These are being pre-generated, though, and Amazon uses a combination of models that are available on its own Amazon Bedrock, which lives on AWS or Amazon Web Services. After the recap, which should get you up to speed, you can roll right into the regular programming. Prime Video says it's rolling out 'Video Recap' in beta in the United States for select English-language original series. As of now, that list includes Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Fallout, The Rig, Bosch, and Upload. It's also only rolling out on living-room devices - think a Fire TV or a streaming player hooked up to a TV. The release does not mention whether additional devices, like the web or apps for iOS or Android, will be supported in the coming months. All eligible users in the US should see 'Video Recaps' by next week, November 24, 2025. Considering it's a limited US beta right now, we've asked Amazon whether this will be rolled out to the UK, Australia, and other international territories, either in beta or as a full release. Amazon says that at launch, 'Video Recaps' will only be available in the United States. And while you will need to navigate to watch the video recap, all of these are pre-generated, so while it's a heavy lift of AI, it won't be happening in real-time every time a user requests it. Gérard Medioni, vice president of technology at Prime Video, writes that Video Recap is a "first-of-its-kind feature [that] demonstrates Prime Video's ongoing commitment to innovation and making the viewing experience more accessible and enjoyable for customers." It's the latest AI-powered feature arriving for Prime Video, and it comes over a year after the streaming platform delivered a major redesign that has impressed some customers and us in our testing. Assuming these video recaps look good and meet the needs of a fun, engaging, and immersive recap, it could start a trend that other streaming services might copy. I, for one, enjoy a recap for a series - especially if there's been a longer gap between seasons. I needed it when The Morning Show returned on Apple TV (formerly Apple TV+), and I'd like to see a fun one for when Ted Lasso returns. Additionally, considering that Prime Video also hosts Prime Video Channels - which let you access other streaming services' content inside the same interface - we'll have to see whether Amazon can strike a deal to offer these video recaps for non-Prime Video originals, or if Amazon opts to extend this to its other in-house-made, produced, or owned content. I'm keen to try this one and see Prime Video's Video Recap in action, but I also have some concerns about how good these can be and, of course, how this might impact the editors, showrunners, and producers who would typically orchestrate recaps at the start of a season. Though if it's up to quality and the actual team decides not to make one, this could serve as a decent substitute - we'll have to wait and see, err, watch.

You can now catch up on Prime Video shows with AI Video Recaps

What's happened? Prime Video has launched a new feature called Video Recaps, using generative AI to create short summary videos that bring you up to speed before a new season. The best part is that it uses actual footage, voice narration, music and dialogue clips to highlight a show's key moments without giving any spoilers. When you go to the detail page of a supported show or movie, you'll see a new Recap button. Once selected, you can choose between a video recap and the existing X-Ray Recaps text summary that creates spoiler-free summaries for shows. The tool is currently available in beta in the U.S. region for select English-language Prime Originals such as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Bosch, Upload, The Rig and Fallout. This is important because: If you've ever started a new season and wondered "what happened last time?", this solves that problem in a cinematic way. Instead of re-watching old episodes or scrolling through Wikipedia, you can jump in with context. The AI behind Video Recaps analyzes character arcs, major plot points and turning scenes, then stitches them into a theatrical-style highlight video. It builds on Prime Video's earlier "X-Ray Recaps" feature from 2024, which offered quick text summaries of key story moments. Since the Recaps feature pulls from licensed footage, the feature is limited to select Prime Originals for now. Recommended Videos AI-generated recaps are quickly becoming the norm across platforms, with tools like Spotify's new recap feature for audiobooks and Kindle's story progress recaps, helping users catch up without starting from scratch. Why should I care? If you watch a lot of TV series on Prime Video and sometimes lose track of characters or storylines, this is a real help. You can start a new season knowing you're refreshed on what came before, saving you hours of rewinding. You also get to decide whether you want just a quick update (text) or a fully produced video recap. This update may encourage viewers to resume shows they paused and feel confident about picking up a season after a long gap. If you don't see Video Recaps feature yet, your account or region may not be included in the beta. While the recap feature rolls out more widely, you can take a look at what's new on Amazon Prime Video or dive straight into the best movies currently available on the platform.

Amazon claims its new AI video summaries have "theatrical quality"

Amazon Prime Video announced the addition of AI-generated Video Recaps on Wednesday to assist viewers in catching up between seasons of select television shows. The feature employs generative artificial intelligence to produce videos for specific Prime Originals, including Fallout, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, and Upload, with a beta rollout beginning the same day. The Video Recaps generate theatrical-quality season summaries that incorporate synchronized narration, dialogue, and music. Amazon describes the technology as one that "utilizes generative AI to create theatrical-quality season recaps with synchronized narration, dialogue, and music." This approach aims to deliver a cohesive audiovisual experience tailored to refresh viewers' memories of prior plot developments and character arcs without requiring them to rewatch entire episodes or seasons. Prime Video introduced a related AI-powered tool last year known as X-Ray Recaps. This feature provides textual summaries of complete seasons, individual episodes, or specific segments within episodes. At launch, Amazon emphasized that the underlying AI model includes guardrails designed to prevent the inclusion of spoilers, ensuring that recaps reveal only essential prior events without disclosing upcoming narrative twists. Text-based AI summaries have become a common element in daily digital interactions for many consumers. For instance, smartphones often generate automatic summaries of lengthy text messages, condensing conversations into key points. Similarly, Google search results frequently display AI-generated overviews at the top of pages, offering quick insights into queried topics. These formats deliver information efficiently but remain confined to written content, differing from the immersive video style of Prime Video's new recaps, which integrate visual and auditory components directly into the streaming interface and may disrupt the viewing flow more noticeably during playback. Other streaming services are incorporating generative AI in varied ways. YouTube TV employs a Key Plays feature to aid viewers joining live sports broadcasts midway. This tool identifies and highlights significant moments, such as critical plays in ongoing games, allowing users to quickly grasp the current score and momentum. In baseball, the algorithm focuses primarily on key offensive plays, which introduces some limitations in coverage. The innovation contributed to YouTube TV receiving its inaugural Technical Emmy Award for advancements in sports viewing technology. Netflix applies generative AI primarily during content production rather than in user-facing features. In the Argentine series The Eternaut, released earlier this year, the platform used AI to generate footage depicting a building collapse in a key scene, marking Netflix's first instance of integrating such technology into final on-screen material. For Happy Gilmore 2, producers utilized generative AI to alter characters' appearances, making them look younger in the film's opening sequence to suit the narrative requirements. Additionally, the pre-production phase of Billionaires' Bunker involved AI tools to conceptualize wardrobe elements and set designs, streamlining the visualization process for the creative team. The integration of AI tools across the film and television industry has prompted discussions among professionals. Artists express concerns over generative models trained on their works without authorization, viewing this practice as a potential risk to employment opportunities in creative fields. In contrast, proponents highlight how AI accelerates repetitive processes in areas like animation and special effects. Tools such as Wonder Dynamics exemplify this by automating labor-intensive tasks, thereby increasing the overall output capacity for artists engaged in visual production.

Amazon Launches AI-Powered Video Recaps Feature for These Shows

* Amazon Video Recaps is currently being rolled out in the US * Amazon Video Recaps is an AI-powered feature * The feature is yet to be released in India Amazon Video Recaps has been launched as a new AI-powered feature for the video streaming platform. It aims to offer viewers an AI-generated video summary, including key plot points, characters, pivotal moments, and dialogues, with voiceover narration, of previous seasons of a show. Amazon claims that Video Recaps will act as a refresher for viewers when a new season of the show is released. The streaming service already offers text-based summaries, called X-Ray Recaps. The new video recaps feature is currently available in the US in beta. Amazon Video Recaps Lets Viewers Catch Up With Previous Seasons The US-based tech giant, on Wednesday, launched a new feature for its video streaming platform, dubbed Amazon Video Recaps. It provides AI-generated video recaps for seasons of shows a viewer has already watched. As a new season of a particular show is released, users will get the ability to get a refresher on the storyline, plot points, and characters on Prime Video. Currently rolling out in beta, Amazon Video Recaps is initially available for select English-language Amazon Original shows in the US. For now, users can watch video recaps for shows like Fallout, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Upload, Bosch, and The Rig. Moreover, it is only available for customers' "living room device". However, the company plans to release the same for other devices in the coming months. Amazon Video Recaps will bring "synchronised voice narration, dialogue snippets, and music" to offer a visual summary to viewers, before they begin watching a new season of a show. It builds upon Amazon's X-Ray Recaps, which also offer AI-generated summaries of shows one has previously streamed, without spoilers. The text-based summaries include key plot points and cliffhangers that a viewer should know before starting. The Video Recap and X-Ray Recaps buttons will appear in the detail page for supported Amazon Original shows. Explaining how Amazon Video Recaps work, the company said that the feature will analyse previous seasons' key plot points, most pivotal moments, and characters, proceeding to create videos with generative AI models. After which, the AI model will find the "most compelling" video clips, while pairing them with audio effects, dialogues, and music, and then stitching them together, with an AI-generated voiceover narration, to create one video recap.

Amazon Launches AI-Powered Series Recap Videos

The AI-powered tool, now in its beta testing phase on select Prime original series, uses narration, dialogue and music to recall earlier seasons of a TV series. Amazon is betting AI can identify key plot points for a series to be synchronized with a voiceover narration and dialogue snippets. The goal is allowing fans to jump back in after possibly a long layoff between seasons and cliffhangers with a quick visual recap of characters and potentially complicated storylines. Prime Video is already using AI to suggest search topics to find your next movie or series to binge, or to dub content for global viewing. The streaming platform is also using AI to offer recaps of live events, including sports, for viewers tuning in after a telecast has started. Amazon's streaming platform last year introduced AI-powered X-Ray Recaps, which offer text summaries of key cliffhangers, character-driven plot points and other spoiler-free series intelligence. "Video Recaps marks a groundbreaking application of generative AI for streaming," Gérard Medioni, vp of technology at Prime Video, said in a statement. "This first-of-its-kind feature demonstrates Prime Video's ongoing commitment to innovation and making the viewing experience more accessible and enjoyable for customers."

How to Enable and Watch AI Recaps on Amazon Prime Video

Currently, the feature is available only for select Prime Originals and only on eligible devices. If you don't see it yet, it may be due to rollout limitations. Amazon Prime Video has emerged as one of the most popular streaming platforms globally. In a market dominated by Netflix, the Amazon platform has been expanding its audience base with a growing catalogue of movies, TV shows, and exclusive series. Viewers often like binge-watch content in cycles. However, it often gets tough to remember past episodes or seasons after months. To solve this issue, Amazon Prime Video has brought AI Recaps that improve viewer convenience. AI Recaps bring memorable moments from a show or movie together to make it a fast glimpse of what happened. Instead of browsing spoilers or replaying previous episodes, users can now watch an AI-generated highlight reel, which makes it easier for the audience to remember what the storyline was. So, if you're trying to start a new season of a show and thinking, wait, what happened to this character exactly? AI Recaps are built just for you.

Prime Video Is Testing a Video Recaps AI Feature That Will Give You the Scoop On What You Missed - IGN

Amazon has announced its latest attempt to use generative AI: to add a Video Recaps service for previous seasons of popular shows on Prime Video. Prime Video is Amazon's streaming platform, and is home to hit TV series such as Fallout, Reacher, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The tool is now in beta on select Prime original series, with catch-ups using music, dialogue, and narration to give the viewer a recap on what happened in the earlier seasons of a show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Amazon is betting AI can identify key plot points for a series to be synchronized with a voiceover narration and dialogue snippets." Naturally, the hope with a new feature like this is that casual viewers who may have missed large sections of a TV series can jump back in easily with an AI-generated visual recap that goes over both characters and crucial storylines missed. Prime Video is no stranger to AI, as it uses it to suggest search topics already, but this is certainly a more blatant use of the technology. "Video Recaps marks a groundbreaking application of generative AI for streaming," VP of technology at Prime Video, Gérard Medioni, explained in a statement. "This first-of-its-kind feature demonstrates Prime Video's ongoing commitment to innovation and making the viewing experience more accessible and enjoyable for customers." No word just yet on when, or if, this technology will be rolled out for all shows and users, but it stands to reason that Prime is going to at least try to get us all on board as soon as possible, especially with big hitters Fallout Season 2, Reacher Season 4, and The Boys Season 5 waiting in the wings. The new comes hot on the heels of Disney boss Bob Iger's confirmation that the company's streaming service will soon allow subscribers to create and view AI-generated content. Speaking during the company's latest earnings call, Iger said Disney+ would change to also host user-generated content for the first time, in a step that looks set to open the floodgates for fans keen to make their own creations featuring the likes of Darth Vader, Iron Man, and characters from Frozen. "[We're] in the midst of rolling out the biggest and the most significant changes -- from a product perspective, from a technology perspective -- since we launched the service in 2019," Iger said, per The Hollywood Reporter. Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

Amazon Drops AI Video Recaps To Reinvent How You Catch Up Shows

Amazon's New AI Video Recaps Bring Theatrical Catch-Up Clips To Prime Video Viewers Amazon has announced AI-generated 'Video Recaps' for Prime Video on Wednesday. The initiative is likely to be a new way for viewers to catch up between seasons on their favorite shows. Unlike text-based summaries, these recaps are theatrical video clips generated using , with narration, dialogue, and music stitched into a shot highlight reel. The feature goes into beta rollout, starting with select Prime Originals, including Prime Originals, including Fallout, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, and Upload.