GoKawiilThis is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
A small subset of Netflix viewers just got a new way to find movies and TV shows. The streamer recently started to test an AI-powered native voice search feature with some subscribers, prompting them to press the Netflix button on their remote control to ask for viewing recommendations.
Once viewers press the button, they’re presented with a few search suggestions, including phrases like “I need a good cry,” “watch in the background,” and “help me stay awake.” Each of these suggestions leads to a set of viewing recommendations, but there’s also an “Ask” button with a waveform icon. Select it, and you’ll start an AI-powered voice search that delivers viewing recommendations in response to natural language prompts.
I’ve had access to this new voice search feature for a few days now, and found it remarkable for two reasons: While still in beta, it’s impressive in its ability to serve up appropriate and interesting viewing recommendations to even the most esoteric requests. It also squarely circumvents the voice assistants and search features built into smart TVs and streaming devices, highlighting the power struggles between TV OS platforms and the streaming services running on them.
Netflix is currently testing its new voice search feature with select members in the U.S. I got access to the feature on a Chromecast with Google TV streaming dongle and a TCL Google TV, but wasn’t able to access it on Roku or Fire TV devices. Even users who have multiple devices running the same smart TV OS have reported that they were only able to access it on a subset of those devices.
Playing with the feature for a few days, I was impressed by its ability to find relevant picks for a wide variety of requests, ranging from the rather obvious (“date night movies from the ’80s” served up The Breakfast Club) to the very specific (“I like the music of Brian Eno, what should I watch” resulted in a suggestion for Abstract: The Art of Design).
I stress-tested the feature more than people usually would during day-to-day use, but it was able to make solid recommendations in response to unusual requests. I honestly thought asking for “fun kids TV shows about death” wouldn’t get me any results. Instead, it served up A Series of Unfortunate Events and Raising Dion, which both were on point.
“I had too much coffee today, what should I watch” resulted in Netflix suggesting a “laid-back” Sheng Wang comedy special and the Headspace Guide to Sleep. When I simply said “hurt people hurt people,” the Netflix app responded with “Hurt people do hurt people. Here are some of the stories behind that,” followed by recommendations for 13 Reasons Why and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay.
Interestingly, Netflix’s voice search doesn’t appear to be tapping into the service’s personalization engine right now. When you ask for recommendations based on what you’ve recently watched, the app’s response is “We can’t answer that one yet, but we’re working on it!” (Speaking of which: All responses are shown as written text. Netflix’s voice search doesn’t use any voice output of its own, which I didn’t mind at all.)
Responses are often accompanied by suggestions to further narrow your results, including “more unhinged” and “more bittersweet.” However, narrowing down recommendations this way doesn’t always work. A search for Cantonese comedies yielded many relevant results. But once I followed Netflix’s suggestion to narrow those results by pressing the “more quirky” button, the streamer suddenly tried to sell me BoJack Horseman as a “Cantonese comedy with a quirky twist.”
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