It’s not uncommon for a streamer on the precipice of premiering one of its banner shows to release a helpful little recap video to catch folks up to speed. What shouldn’t be a sentence written, let alone read, is that Prime Video appears to have rake-stepped once more with AI, making new slop in the form of a Fallout ahead of its second season. Surprise! It comes complete with inaccuracies and hallucinations about the show.
GamesRadar+ first reported on the news; Prime Video’s Fallout season one recap video was also shared on Reddit. You can currently view the three-minute clip on Prime Video by going to the Fallout page, selecting season two, and clicking “Bonus: Fallout Season 1 Recap.”
Immediately, it hits viewers with a monotone text-to-speech-sounding voice. It’s not unlike the streamer’s anime AI beta dub that pissed a bunch of users off—to the point that Amazon quietly rolled back the implementation of its English AI beta for shows like Banana Fish and No Game No Life.
Key among the Fallout trailer’s errors is the robotic narrator claiming the show’s flashbacks to a pre-ghoul Walton Goggins are set in 1950s America. In fact, as GamesRadar+ notes, these scenes, while both a throwback to the novelty of the time and featuring a nuclear-powered futuristic visage, actually take place in 2077.
Another inaccuracy within the recap video is its characterization of season one’s climax, stating the Ghoul’s offer to Ella Purnell‘s Lucy MacLean to hunt after her father was of the “die or leave with him” variety.
In reality, both characters were fed up with all of Kyle MacLachlan’s Hank and his bullshit, so they decided to pretty amicably join up to hunt him down. That is seemingly the whole thrust of the show’s upcoming second season. But no one would’ve gleaned that by watching this particular recap video.
io9 has reached out to Prime Video for comment and will update this post should we hear back.
Prime Video’s AI recap videos aren’t a new thing, it seems. As with AI beta dub tracks introduced back in March, Amazon has been testing AI-generated recap videos as recently as last month, according to the Verge. In fact, the company was so proud of it, it wrote a whole blog touting that AI video recaps would “use AI to identify a show’s most important plot points, combining them with synchronized voice narration, dialogue snippets, and music to create a visual summary that prepares viewers for the new season.”
“Video Recaps marks a groundbreaking application of generative AI for streaming,” Gérard Medioni, vice president of technology at Prime Video, wrote in the post. “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.”
But as noted earlier, the program clearly isn’t built to do what it says it would, like identifying all the crucial details of a show, when it even gets the simplest and most nuanced details wrong. Then again, AI is wont to do that. But even if it did those things right, who is asking to sit down and listen to an emotionless voice summarize plot details for a show with all the enthusiasm of a wet dishrag?
On any given day, all of this is just another bad look for a media corporation. But it’s especially messed up considering a lot of folks will likely take a gander at it, what with Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards taking place later today. Last year, Fallout won Best Adaptation, bringing out Bethesda developers like Todd Howard to accept the award. Two years ago, Fallout stars Purnell, Goggins, Aaron Moten, and a dude wearing full power armor took the stage to announce the show.
Fallout is a good show that deserves kudos, so seeing the platform that houses it not give enough of a shit to do the bare minimum of hiring someone to cut a quick little recap of the show’s “things to remember” moments is all kinds of hacky and lazy.
Fallout season two premieres December 17 on Prime Video, should this instance of AI chicanery not have yucked your Vault-dwelling yum.
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Isaiah Colbert
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