Alexa advises you what to watch on Netflix (or almost)

Not sure what to stream? If you have a device with Alexa (and you live in the US or Canada, for now) you can ask the voice assistant to start one Netflix series or movie designed for you. Almost. The function allows you to activate the “Play Something” from Netflix, which streams a movie or TV series.

Alexa può attivare “Play Something” su Netflix

In recent years Netflix has realized that its huge catalog of movies and TV series can become an insurmountable problem for those who never know which movie to watch at night, or which TV series to try to fall in love with. This is why he thought of a “Shuffle” function, with random playback. Then get to the “Play Something” button, which plays content based on your previous choices.

In the United States and Canada, this option now has local activation. If you have an Echo speaker or a smartphone with the Alexa app, but above all a Fire TV device with the Netflix account activated, you can let Alexa choose the movie for you, more or less. Just say “Alexa, Play Something”To stream a TV series or a movie.

In describing the function, the marketing director of Netflix Magno Herran explained that “We are excited to join Fire TV to bring Alexa’s voice technology to Netflix’s Play Something feature. Now you can instantly discover a show or movie that we know you’ll love based on what you’ve seen before. ”

If you use the voice assistant on a regular basis, this new feature could help you avoid wasting minutes upon minutes by passing through Netflix’s endless catalog of options. But for the moment, Netflix only granted to Alexa to give you movie recommendations: Google Assistant, Siri and all others are excluded. Despite Amazon’s Prime Video being a competitor to Netflix.

At the moment we don’t know when this function will arrive in Italy. But if it succeeds across the Atlantic, we too may soon be asking Alexa to manage all of our streaming.