Despite the heavy controversy surrounding it, artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a norm in the entertainment industry. Studios are gradually embracing it for its products, with one of the big adopters being Amazon. Generative AI is a relatively new technology. As such, it's often prone to significant mistakes. Prime Video just learned that the hard way... and not for the first time.
In November, Amazon announced the rollout of a new generative-AI beta feature for "select Prime Originals" that created recap videos for its shows. It scanned a series and highlighted what it believed to be major plot points to play the summary prior to a new season. The feature was used for Amazon's hit video game adaptation Fallout, starring Ella Purnell, Walter Goggins and Aaron Moten. The show is getting a second season on December 17, and as such, it was the prime (pun not originally intended, but I've now noticed it, and I stand by it) candidate to receive a recap.
The show's first season summary was entirely AI-generated, even featuring an AI voiceover (described as "monotone" by The Verge). Unfortunately, things did not go as planned with it. As reported and confirmed by GamesRadar, a Reddit user noticed the recap included significant inaccuracies for the show. For starters, it stated Fallout's opening sequence—which centered around Walton Goggins' Cooper Howard and his daughter pre-nuclear disaster—was set in the 1950s.
That was off by a few decades, since the scene actually takes place in 2077. Furthermore, the recap stated Lucy (Ella Purnell) joined the Ghoul (Goggins) after he gave her a choice to either "die or leave with him." However, it was missing the context that Lucy was not being threatened. She was, in fact, motivated to follow him to find her father. Per The Verge, after the situation gained media traction, several recaps were taken off of the streaming service, including Jack Ryan, Bosch, Upload, The Rig, and, of course, Fallout.
Prime Video's Vice President of Technology Gérard Medioni said of the AI recaps in Amazon's original announcement: "Video Recaps marks a groundbreaking application of generative AI for streaming. 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."
This is actually the second time Amazon has hit a major AI snag in the month of December. Earlier in the month, anime fans noticed the beloved manga adaptation Banana Fish—which released in 2018 and has never received an English dub—had within its "Languages" section and "AI beta" option, which gave the show an artifical intelligence-generated English translation (via IGN). The results were... less than ideal.
Oh, who am I kidding? The dub was atrocious, with a monotone voice turning what was supposed to be a heartbreaking, dramatic scene into a parody-sounding line reading. Below is footage of the dub:
This, however, was not Amazon's first usage of AI for dubbing content on its streaming platform. Per Forbes, the company used the technology as far back as February 2025 to dub the film O Silêncio de Marcos Tremmer, originally in Portuguese, to English. The translated dialogue also ended up courting controversy online due to its monotone quality:
Fallout Season 2 will be released on Prime Video on December 17, 2025.
What do you think about Fallout's faulty AI recap? Did you catch it before it was taken down? Leave your thoughts in the comments!