Amazon Prime Video drops new feature after subscriber backlash

As the streaming wars between competing companies heat up, and streaming giants do their best to attract as many subscribers as possible at a time when cable and satellite TV are losing market share, Amazon Prime Video is making major moves. Earlier this year, Amazon shut down its standalone Freevee app, instructing viewers to continue enjoying Freevee content on Prime Video. The streamer apparently aimed to simplify user experience by consolidating offerings on a single platform. More recently, Amazon Prime Video gave U.S. subscribers a major free upgrade with a new dedicated news section. The move came at the perfect time, since competing platforms such as Netflix, Apple TV +, Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock have all raised their prices this year to address higher production costs for quality content.Any free improvement of a service is largely welcomed by users, as price is becoming a more important factor than ever. In fact, close to 64% of cord-cutters dropped a streaming service in the past year due to rising costs or switched to a cheaper or ad-supported plan, according to All About Cookies. In the latest development, Amazon Prime Video pulled the plug on a recently introduced feature following backlash from users.

Amazon Prime Video has removed its AI-powered video recap of “Fallout” after subscribers have pointed out errors.PixieMe/Shutterstock.com Amazon Prime Video experiments with AI-powered features In November 2024, Amazon introduced an AI-powered feature dubbed X-Ray Recaps for Prime Video. The feature was designed to create generative AI summaries of shows and episodes, and it builds upon Prime Video’s existing X-Ray feature. “With X-Ray Recaps, Prime Video is delivering a new way to get up to speed without wasting time or risking spoilers, allowing you to spend more time streaming your favorite TV shows. X-Ray Recaps is a generative AI-powered feature that creates brief, easy-to-digest summaries of full seasons of TV shows, single episodes, and even pieces of episodes, all personalized down to the exact minute of where you are watching,” according to Amazon’s 2024 press release. One year later, in November 2025, Prime Video expanded its AI experimentation with AI-generated Video Recaps (generative AI that produces video summaries with narration and dialogue) in beta for select Prime Originals. “Video Recaps use AI to summarize a show’s most pertinent plot points with a theatrical-quality video that includes narration, dialogue, and music,” Amazon wrote at the time.

Amazon Prime Videopulls plug on new AI-powered video recap after "Fallout" failureAmazon Prime Video has removed its AI-powered video recap of “Fallout” after subscribers pointed out errors, reported The Verge. In its season-one recap of "Fallout," the AI recap incorrectly states that the character The Ghoul has a flashback set in “1950s America” rather than the year 2077, as spotted by Games Radar and users on Reddit and Twitter. The AI narrator of the "Fallout" recap also inaccurately stated that The Ghoul gives character Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) a choice to “die or leave with him” on a quest to find her father. The show's plot is more complicated than that, however. It would have been more precise to say that Lucy could’ve gone with The Ghoul or stayed, risking an attack from The Brotherhood of Steel. The streaming service quickly pulled back the feature, and Video Recaps are now missing from the following shows: "Fallout""The Rig""Tom Clandy’s Jack Ryan""Upload""Bosch" Subscribers slam Amazon Prime Video over AI recap "Fallout" failure The first post on Reddit highlighting inaccuracies in "Fallout" AI recap garnered more than 830 upvotes, signaling an importance for Amazon Prime Video users. User spicyitaliansausagee, who started the thread, mentions and links a post from Gizmodo dated Dec. 11 and titled “Amazon’s Official ‘Fallout’ Season 1 Recap Is AI Garbage Filled With Mistakes.” The majority of users commenting on the thread expressed negative sentiment toward the AI-generated recap, while others focused on the broader implications of using AI instead of real people. User BewareNixonsGhost wrote, “All it would have taken is one person to watch it from start to finish to realize it wasn't correct. Just one person who knows the story of the first season. They didn't even need to know the lore of the games. Just the first season. But they can't even do that.”User moger777 replied arguing, “That’s the problem though, they don’t want to pay anyone.” Some users, like Thepandasupreme1, suggest that for recaps, it is sufficient to splice together the most important scenes from season one, and that no voiceover is necessary. More Streaming:HBO Max unveils new way to watch beloved showsCNN makes generous limited-time offer to subscribersPopular streaming service sees key feature go dark for some subscribersThe disappointment continued, with many subscribers going after AI in general. User Socialimbad1991 blamed the decision on Amazon corporate, arguing it’s “garbage.”The thread signals overall disappointment with the AI push across Amazon Prime Video, with the majority preferring real people to AI and arguing that the move indicates laziness and a profit-only focus. Another Reddit thread sharing the news that Amazon Prime Video is pulling the AI-recap feature shows the same sentiment and gained 14,000 upvotes. “They could have paid 10 full-time people for literally their entire lives to write these summaries, and it still would have cost less than what they just wasted on this AI fail,” user GiroroG66 said, commenting on The Verge article.Amazon’s recent AI investments and the AI bubble Amazon does not publicly reveal its spending on AI for Prime Video alone. It has, however, reported some broader companywide AI investments. During the company’s February earnings call, Chief Finance Officer Brian Olsavsky said 2025 capital expenditures could surpass $100 billion, with the majority of it going toward AI and Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported Business Insider. In November 2025, Amazon announced an investment of up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing capabilities for Amazon Web Services (AWS) U.S. government customers. This investment, set to break ground in 2026, will add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of AI and supercomputing capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions by building data centers with advanced compute and networking technologies, according to Amazon’s official press release. More recently, Amazon confirmed it is investing $35bn in India by 2030 to advance AI-driven digitization, export growth, and job creation, reported BBC. AI is spreading rapidly across a multitude of industries. Many experts have openly shared the belief that artificial intelligence represents a bubble that at some point will burst. Still, it would be hard for companies that want to be seen as cutting-edge to remain isolated from the technology. Yet many Amazon Prime Video subscribers on the above-mentioned threads would prefer the streaming service “lagged behind,” at least when it comes to the recap feature. Related: YouTube TV unveils generous new offers for subscribers