Amazon Fire TV gets a free upgrade that makes voice search so much smarter

Your Amazon Fire TV device is about to get a whole lot smarter. That's because the search feature in Fire TV is getting some extra AI power to help Alexa give you more accurate and more useful answers, and to give you much better viewing recommendations too.

The newly upgraded search feature will be able to answer more complex plain language questions such as "Which movie has the line 'life is like a box of chocolates?'" and will also be able to give you viewing options based on actors, the characters they play, and the genre and subjects of movies and TV shows. 

The feature was announced late last year, but it's only just rolling out now. Amazon is prioritising the US for this upgrade and it should reach your device in the next few weeks if you're a US user. UK users will have to wait a little longer.

What will AI bring to Fire TV?

Leaving aside the usual linguistic quibbles – this upgrade is based on ChatGPT-style large language models rather than actual artificial intelligence, so it's more of a super-powered natural language interpreter than Skynet – the features will be much more useful and much more personalised. 

For example, Alexa can now tell which streaming services you're subscribed to and which ones you aren't, so when you ask for recommendations it's not going to suggest shows or movies on services you don't have. Or at least, that's the current situation: I can't imagine Amazon will want to pass up the opportunity to sell additional channel bundles going forwards.

The new search feature is rolling out to customers in the US over the next few weeks, and you'll need to be running Fire OS 6 or later in order to get it. As yet we don't know when the rollout will reach other countries such as the UK. 

Amazon is going big on generative AI: it previously added an artwork generator that enabled you to generate your own background images on your Fire TV, and that was part of a wider suite of features that Amazon calls the Ambient Experience.