Amazon Accessibility Boss Peter Korn Talks New AI Search For Fire TV, AI And Accessibility, More In Recent New Interview

In a press release issued on Thursday, Amazon announced a significant upgrade to its Fire TV software: AI-powered search. Amazon says the functionality, which is powered by a large language model, or LLM, enables users to ask Alexa to find content similarly to how “you might ask a friend with encyclopedic knowledge about TV shows and movies, using complex or nuanced language to ask for options based on topic, genre, plot, character, actor, and even by quotes.” Alexa can be asked such queries as “Show me psychological thrillers with surprise endings” and “What movie has the line, ‘You’re killing me Smalls?’” Search results include options from Prime Video (duh!) and other streaming services.

According to Amazon, AI search is rolling out (in English) to users in the United States on Fire TV devices running FOS6 and later. The feature will expand to all capable Fire TV devices “in the coming weeks.”

Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down via videoconference with Peter Korn, Amazon’s director of accessibility for devices and services, to talk about the AI-powered search feature and what it means in an accessibility context. At a high level, Korn beamed with pride over how the AI search feature isn’t sheerly another way to conveniently surface content; rather, the recommendations make finding things more accessible too for the disability community. As Fire TV celebrates its 10th anniversary, he told me, today’s announcement of AI search is yet another illustration of the work Korn and team has put in over the last decade to make the software as accessible as possible to every user. He pointed to a slew of innovations over that period—many of which covered here over the years by yours truly, in fact—including Dialogue Boost in Prime Video and Amazon’s VoiceView screen reader.

Korn explained the AI search feature is something he and his team have been working on for some time and have “thought about quite a bit.” In a broad scope, a big reason it’s so noteworthy from an accessibility standpoint is due to cognition. Everyone, regardless of their ability status, loses some degree of cognitive sharpness as they grow older; Korn said cognition is “an area of accessibility that hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it needs and deserves.” LLMs, then, have “incredible power and application” because they can compensate for a dip in cognitive skill. Applying AI to Fire TV is “another small piece” Amazon can contribute to the overall accessibility of the platform.

“It [AI search] really captures the things we do for everyone that may be especially valuable for people with disabilities and things we do for people with disabilities may also valuable for everyone else,” he said of accessibility’s potential to help everyone. “What’s essential for some may be useful for someone else… like dialogue that’s essential for someone with hearing loss, but any number of times it may be hard in the mix of this particular movie to hear the dialogue or the explosions in an action scene. I view generative AI searching as another example of that.”

When asked about artificial intelligence and accessibility, Korn said it’s no different than any other type of technology insofar as companies have a responsibility to build it thoughtfully and “in ways that are helpful to people.” AI-search in Fire TV is but one “small example” of that notion. Amazon talks a lot about AI internally, according to Korn, and he keenly emphasized the company—and the industry—is very much in the nascent era when it comes to this technology. For Amazon’s part, Korn said the company is still learning and ruminating over “all the ways they can help make our lives better.” One of them is obviously accessibility for the disability community. Korn told me Amazon’s software engineering teams thinks about how generative AI can be helpful in using accessibility APIs to render alt-text for imagery or captions for video.

Korn went on to praise industry peers such as Be My Eyes and Microsoft for their respective uses of AI to enhance accessibility. So much digital ink is spilled over the ethics and safety of artificial intelligence, not to mention over more draconian concerns like robots commandeering the planet, but much less has (predictably) been made about AI’s genuine capacity for good for certain communities. Korn’s comments dovetail well with similar sentiments shared with me on the topic by Adobe’s Mary Ann Jawili and Microsoft’s Jenny-Lay Flurrie in recent months.

As to Fire TV itself, Korn is a staunch believer in the idea that the platform’s accessibility merits extend far beyond merely surfacing TV shows and movies. The Fire TV Cube, for example, is capable of not only doing your bog-standard content searches, but is also able to control one’s entire home theater setup. What this means is, a person can have an AV receiver and an Xbox or PlayStation, and Alexa can switch HDMI inputs. Likewise, asking Alexa to change the channel in an app like YouTube TV will do just that. All told, the Fire TV Cube in particular can be worth its weight in gold for someone with, say, visual and/or motor conditions that make switching inputs or otherwise using the remote control difficult. Korn called the Cube “an incredible tool for accessibility beyond just the television world,” adding he hears from disabled people at conferences who give the Cube and Fire TV generally “large amounts of noise and applause.” No other set-top box works quite like the Cube, Korn said, also pointing to the affordability of Fire TV devices overall.

Amazon announced it sold 150 million Fire TV products in 2022, Korn said. The next year, that number ballooned to 200 million. People with disabilities, he said, are “very much” amongst those hundreds of million of buyers. All told, Fire TV has proven itself “an accessible device in customers’ living rooms they use in many ways,” Korn told me.

Looking towards the future, Korn said he envisions Fire TV’s technical capabilities becoming even more apparent. A byproduct of that power, he said, is people will be able to keep their older devices around longer because of software updates that rely on cloud-based infrastructure. That means the value proposition is even higher because customers needn’t spend money to replace them so often. In the big picture, Korn expressed excitement over working under longtime Microsoft executive Panos Panay, now at Amazon leading the company’s consumer electronics business. Korn was “delighted” by the support Panay showed his accessibility group, noting Panay has clearly signaled “we’re stepping on the accelerator with respect to accessibility” in forthcoming products.

Amazon first announced AI search for Fire TV at last year’s fall event. (Which, incidentally, I was invited to cover but couldn’t make the trip.)