Starting today, Prime Video is rolling out a new user experience for its streaming app on TV. Subscribers across the globe will start to gain access to the improved navigation, menus, and AI-powered recommendations.
Prime Video’s refreshed UI is a direct response to subscriber criticisms regarding navigating and bloated menu tabs. To streamline and improve the streaming experience, Prime Video has designed a familiar, yet effective new take on its UI. Last month, I got a chance to see the changes being made with hands-on demos as well as speak to the Prime Video team.
Amazon’s refresh includes a widely requested new navigation system. As Prime Video began expanding to include not only Prime Video content but also premium video-on-demand (PVOD), live TV and partnering subscriptions, Prime Video’s navigation became unruly. It was hard to decipher which piece of content belonged to which subscription. Adding to that, it was a struggle to even understand if your current subscriptions included access to a piece of content.
“We want to get this out to customers as quickly as possible, Kam Keshmiri, Prime Video’s VP of Design, says. “So while we’re being ambitious, we want to have this new experience in 100% of our customers hands as soon as we can. So hopefully, you’ll be you’ll be you’ll be able to experience it in Canada, much like the rest of the world.”
As part of the global rollout, users will see a “content-forward” navigation bar and single-click access to titles. At the top of the screen, Prime Video will offer menu tabs for “Home,” “Movies,” “TV Shows,” “Sports,” and “Live TV,” as well as active add-on subscriptions such as Crave or AMC+.
The new ‘Prime’ destination will let you easily and conveniently see all the shows, movies, sports and linear programming available as part of your Prime subscription. Think of this as your main Prime Video hub. Additional market-specific benefits and deals will also be available here.
The refreshed “hero rotator” menu will display new premiere pieces of content available to view with your subscription or those available via PVOD. You can play, purchase, or subscribe to view their pieces of content with a single click. This model of “one-click playback” lets you jump right back into a show or movie without having to jump through two or three pages and menus.
“What’s exciting for us about this new experience, is all the things you’re already entitled to watch and you’re subscribed to, will be really well prominently curated for you, Keshmiri says.”We’ll make it much easier to play. One click playback, we don’t do that today. It seems small. It’s one of those things that it unlocks so much, then being able to customize those rows and those carousels based on your taste, having all the things you’re already entitled to be a prominent part of that is important.”
On top of improved navigation, Prime Video aims to make it easier to sign in and manage add-on subscriptions. In Canada, Prime Video is a platform for other services like Crave, Stack TV, Paramount+, Starz, and more. By navigating to “Subscriptions,” you can see what you are already subscribed to alongside recommendations based on preferences and viewing history.
The new Prime Video UI refresh is integrating generative AI across the board. Designed to not only assist in getting information across to users, AI is being used to pinpoint viewing trends to better create recommendations. This includes the “Made for You” collections in ‘Movies’ and ‘TV Shows’. Using Amazon Bedrock and AWS, Prime Video will display categories of movies it thinks you’ll enjoy. For instance, if you’ve been on an action comedy kick, Prime Video will offer curated selections of movies. While a similar feature to the existing recommendations on the service, using AI, Amazon hopes the new recommendations will better reflect subscriber tastes.
Out of everything shown, this will be the feature to keep an eye on. While Amazon already has curated content lists and genres recommended, I’d like to see how the AI algorithm can hone in on my preferences whether it be genre, actor, etc. How Amazon’s generative AI can flesh out recommendations and pinpoint new pieces of content can be a major driver in Prime Video over the next few years. Though, it’ll all rely on accuracy and relevance to each user’s tastes.
Finally, Amazon’s refresh will include AI-driven synopses for TV Shows and Movies. Amazon’s generative AI platform is being used to create short yet concise synopses for its content. While actively scrolling through the new content model for Prime Video last month, I saw 80 percent of them driving home a well-made synopsis. However, some did get long in the tooth, making me believe this aspect could still be a work-in-progress.
