Amazon is turning Fire TV into something that feels a little less like a streaming menu and a little more like an AI-powered entertainment assistant. The company is rolling out new Alexa+ features that can understand complicated, conversational requests, while also giving Fire TV a dedicated Alexa+ hub and bringing smarter discovery tools to its mobile app.
And yes, okay, so the screen is now full of prompts.
Amazon says Alexa+ on Fire TV can now reason across your subscriptions, watch history, content availability and real-world context such as awards, events and cultural references. Instead of forcing you to search for a specific title, you can ask something more natural, like having Alexa find Emmy-nominated shows that were overlooked, put Marvel movies in timeline order, or recommend games worth watching over the weekend.
That conversational approach also carries through to follow-up questions. Amazon is redesigning the experience so you can continue a conversation with Alexa+, dig deeper into recommendations and scroll back through earlier responses in a threaded interface.
Which brings us to the new Alexa+ hub.
Amazon says the dedicated hub is designed to show personalized prompts that give you ideas about what you can actually ask Alexa+. You can select one of those prompts, watch the recommended content, and even pick up conversations that started on another Alexa-enabled device.
In other words, Fire TV is basically looking at you and going, “Here, have some things to ask me.”
Your phone is getting pulled into the TV experience
Amazon is also giving its Fire TV mobile app a much bigger role.
Alexa+ is coming to the app, allowing users to search for entertainment using text or voice, browse recommendations and add titles to their watchlists. The company is also adding several features designed around the fact that people often discover movies and shows while they’re nowhere near their television.
One of the more interesting additions lets you share an article or list of recommended movies with the Fire TV app. Alexa+ can turn that article into a curated list, after which you can add individual titles—or the whole thing—to your watchlist.
There’s also a photo-based discovery feature. You can take a picture of a movie poster, location, screenshot, meme or something else that reminds you of a movie or show, then send it to the Fire TV app. Alexa+ will identify it and recommend related movies or shows, along with information about which streaming services have them.
And if you find something you want to watch immediately, the app can send you directly to the relevant streaming service on your phone. Once you’re back home, the title can appear in Fire TV’s Continue Watching row so you can pick up where you left off.
That’s a pretty neat bridge between “I saw this somewhere” and “I actually remembered to watch it.”
Fire TV is becoming more of a content hub
Amazon is also expanding the entertainment hubs built into the Fire TV experience.
Live TV content from more than 40 apps is now integrated into Fire TV, including DirecTV, Peacock, Sling, Tubi and YouTube TV. That content can appear both in the Guides tab and directly on the Fire TV home screen, putting live television, on-demand programming and free content in one place.
The Games hub is getting an upgrade as well, bringing cloud gaming from Xbox, Luna and NVIDIA GeForce NOW into a single experience. Amazon says it has also redesigned the browsing experience so users can search for games by genre.
Then there’s the Creators hub, which brings creator-focused content together in its own destination.
And because apparently the TV needed even more stuff to show you, Amazon is also preparing a redesigned Amazon Music app for Fire TV.
The new app will combine music, music videos, video podcasts, live concerts, artist performances, festival livestreams and original content. Dedicated sections for music, podcasts and performances are designed to make the whole thing easier to navigate, while users can switch between audio and video, view lyrics and browse related playlists.
Alexa+ will be built into the experience, too, allowing users to ask for music based on a mood, activity or artist—or request podcasts by title or creator.
When are these features coming?
Amazon says the new Alexa+ Fire TV features will begin rolling out to U.S. customers in November. The initial rollout covers the second-generation Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember TVs and partner televisions with Fire TV built in, including models from Hisense and TCL.
The features will eventually expand to the newly announced Fire TV Stick 4K and additional countries early next year.
The Fire TV mobile app updates will begin rolling out to U.S. customers this year, with expansion to additional countries planned for early next year.
Amazon’s broader Fire TV strategy is becoming pretty clear. The company isn’t just trying to make it faster to find a movie anymore. It’s trying to make the television understand what you’re actually asking for—even when you don’t know the exact title, service or search terms.
Which sounds useful.
Although, looking at that new Alexa+ hub, I can’t help but think the Fire TV home screen is about to become one giant collection of things Amazon thinks I should ask it.
Okay, so the screen is now full of prompts.
That’s fine. I’m sure Alexa has a prompt for that, too.
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