Earlier this month, Amazon announced a new feature aimed at using AI to summarize Prime Video programming.
The tool, currently in beta, generates everything from narration, dialogue, and music to summarize key plot points, allowing fans to instantly watch their favorite shows.
At least, that was the idea. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this AI tool suffers from the common flaws of the technology that we've all grown accustomed to, and it's already wreaking havoc by confusing the details of the hit show.
as game radar A recap of the first season of the company's popular series “Fallout” was riddled with errors and removed by Amazon last week, according to reports. For example, in the recap, the flashbacks from the perspective of Cooper Howard, also known as the Ghoul, played by actor Walton Goggins, were supposed to be set in the 1950s, even though the drama and flashbacks were set in 2077 and the 2060s, respectively.
The AI also claimed that the ghoul offered Lucy MacLean, played by actor Ella Purnell, an offer to “die or leave with me” in order to hunt down her father. This is despite the fact that the two share the same motivations and purposefully join forces to pursue their father. gizmodo points out.
Simply put, the AI completely misrepresented the motivations of the show's core ensemble and messed with the absolute basics.
This incident once again highlights how AI slop is infiltrating almost every aspect of our daily lives. Even the job of summarizing Fallout, which returns for Season 2 this week and was painstakingly produced by a passionate crew that pays homage to the video game series of the same name on which it was based, is not safe.
The news comes after Amazon quietly discontinued AI-generated English dubbing for several anime shows earlier this month, including “Banana Fish” and “No Game No Life.” Fans were furious, saying the soulless dubbing was “laughably bad.”
In addition to the severe lack of dubbing, many netizens accused Amazon of cutting corners by blindly replacing human voice actors with questionable AI.
Famous anime voice actor Daman Mills tweeted at the time: “Amazon's choice to use AI to dub Banana Fish is a grave insult to us as performers.” “AI continues to threaten the lives of performers in every language (as well as Japanese performers, of course, who have been incredibly vocal on the subject).”
The company's recent attempts at a leisurely round-up of its own programming haven't gone so well. as The Verge Amazon has since removed various compilations, including those from other Amazon Prime series such as “Fallout,” “Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan” and “Upload,” according to a report last week.
The feature, called “Video Recaps,” was released last month as part of an early beta. According to the official press release, it will “analyze the season's key plot points and character arcs to deeply understand the most important moments that resonate with viewers.”
“AI then finds the most engaging video clips and combines them with audio effects, conversation snippets, and music,” the company claims. “All of this is stitched together with comprehensive AI-generated voiceover narration to provide a theatrical-quality visual summary.”
But given the resulting mess, Amazon still has a lot to prove to justify the existence of its sloppy roundup tool.
“It was enough for one person to watch it from beginning to end and realize it wasn't right,” a Reddit user claimed. “Only one person knows the story of the first season. They didn't even need to know the legends of the game.”
“It's still the first season,” they added. “But they can't even do that.”
More information on Amazon: Amazon quietly cancels disastrous AI dubbing of popular anime after protests
