Amazon is charging full steam ahead with AI. The tech giant, known for its Firestick streaming service and global megastore, has unveiled Fire TV’s new AI-powered search feature, making it easier than ever for users to find exactly what they’re looking for.
“AI is evolving, and so is computer power, but content is evolving, too. As these changes continue to occur at a rapid pace, our expectations and those of our customers shift with them, which is why we never stop innovating. This is just the beginning for Fire TV search, and we’re excited for the limitless possibilities of where we can take this feature,” Jitesh Mehta, senior manager of software development, said.
The AI feat has been achieved by building a search system beyond keyword-matching, harnessing Alexa’s vast knowledge base to enhance Fire TV search results and employing a new ranking machine learning model to improve the order and relevance of results.
“For example, if you ask Alexa to search for ‘movies about dog and human friendships, ’” Mehta explained, “a traditional search system might just return popular movies that have dogs in them, as opposed bringing up the movies where the main theme is the emotional connection between dogs and humans.”
“The team needed to ensure Fire TV search was using the information retrieved by Alexa’s Q+A system — which stores a vast database of entertainment knowledge — to be able to accurately answer customer queries about things like plot points. Fire TV search was enhanced to use the natural language interpretation of the question and answers available from Alexa to be able to surface a relevant movie or TV show,” Mehta added.
