Amazon Pulls AI-Generated ‘Fallout’ Recap Ahead Of Season 2 Amidst Backlash

The recap claimed that the Ghoul gave Ella Purnell’s Lucy a choice to “die or leave with him” when they go after Kyle MacLachlan’s character, Hank, as he heads across the desert to New Vegas. This makes the interaction sound threatening, when in fact Lucy and the Ghoul are fairly chummy at this point.

But the inaccuracies are just one symptom of a much larger problem and even a perfectly accurate recap – the bare minimum one would expect from this kind of video – would still be problematic. AI is a useful tool but a poor replacement for human labor and creativity. Recaps aren’t the most important part of a show, obviously, but they’re very useful for viewers and, in the right hands, can also be a lot of fun in their own right.

Jane the Virgin featured hilarious recaps before each episode that really leaned into that show’s parody of telenovelas. Vince Vaughn’s Apple TV series, Bad Monkey, did something very similar with its recaps. Like a good trailer, a good recap can set the tone and help viewers focus on the important bits, highlighting details people might have missed or indicating where we should focus.

You won’t get this from AI. You can’t even get a competently edited recap of Amazon’s biggest show of December. Of course, Amazon is saving a buck by putting out AI slop instead of a professional recap, but human talent is paying for it in the long run.

“Video Recaps marks a groundbreaking application of generative AI for streaming,” VP of technology at Prime Video, Gérard Medioni, said in a statement when these AI recaps were first revealed. “This first-of-its-kind feature demonstrates Prime Video’s ongoing commitment to innovation and making the viewing experience more accessible and enjoyable for customers.”

How AI recaps make the viewing experience “more enjoyable” remains a mystery, given entire YouTube channels exist where very real and talented human beings make detailed and useful recaps for fans. For instance, here is a recap of Fallout Season 1 – made by an actual human being – that Amazon could very easily paid someone to make:

Then again, not paying people seems to be more important than making the “viewing experience more accessible and enjoyable.” At this point, most of these companies have sunk so much money into AI, they kind of need to use it whenever possible, even as (a lousy) proof of concept. But that’s not good for people working in these industries.

As one commenter on reddit noted, “I’m an editor who literally used to cut these types of recaps together as part of my old job. I would get notes from the client, watch the show, mark up the episodes, and then carefully string together a recap that hopefully had a little stylistic panache while still going over the main points that were needed for the next season.

“I moved on to other types of editing, but am currently struggling to find much work, as are many talented editors I know with years and years of experience. So yeah…this definitely took someone’s job.”

It may just be recaps now, but AI is worming its way into more and more aspects of life and the entertainment industry. The problem is that AI certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to brainstorming, organization, research and so forth, but it’s very bad at actual creativity. A lot of executives and tech bros don’t really understand that – they’re good at business stuff but couldn’t identify actual creativity if it slapped them in the face.