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- Amazon Slop-ifies its "Fallout" Recap
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Amazon Slop-ifies its Fallout Recap
Back when Amazon first announced it was creating AI-generated recaps for its original programming, I immediately knew there would be some sort of downstream issue. I mean, just listen to the way this is written:
According to Amazon, creating each video recap is a multistep process. Using generative AI, the Video Recaps feature analyzes a season’s key plot points and character arcs to “deeply understand the most pivotal moments that will resonate with viewers as they enter the next season,” per the company. AI then finds the most compelling video clips and pairs them with audio effects, dialog and music. Those are stitched together with an AI-generated voiceover narration.
AI cannot “deeply understand the most pivotal moments that will resonate with viewers.” It doesn’t “understand” anything, just as my iPhone’s predictive text doesn’t understand I would never say “That’s food” rather than “That’s good,” or “ducking” instead of… well, you know.
Amazon is of course all-in on AI and so it has to give consumers the illusion that sentient robots are the equivalent of 2010s-era TV show bloggers. They’re not!
As reported by Twitter and Reddit users as well as The Verge and Games Radar, despite Amazon’s claim of “deep understanding,” its AI recap doesn’t actually understand many parts of the show, such as when it is set or what happened in the season 1 finale.
An amusing sidenote: many of the videos reporting on the Fallout AI slop recap are… also AI slop:
Speaking of slop, The Washington Post has launched its own error-riddled AI-generated products, in this case podcasts, as reported by Semafor:
Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper’s mobile app. In a release, the paper said users will be able to choose preferred topics and AI hosts, and could “shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts and soon even ask questions using our Ask The Post AI technology.”
But less than 48 hours since the product was released, people within the Post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant changes to story content, like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source’s quotes as the paper’s position on an issue.
According to four people familiar with the situation, the errors have alarmed senior newsroom leaders who have acknowledged in an internal Slack channel that the product’s output is not living up to the paper’s standards. In a message to other WaPo staff shared with Semafor, head of standards Karen Pensiero wrote that the errors have been “frustrating for all of us.”
This seems familiar, although markedly more depressing since this is the storied Post we’re talking about instead of a grifting podcast company.
The uniting figure between Amazon and The Washington Post is of course Jeff Bezos, who founded the former and owns the latter, and has described wanting to dedicate his time to developing AI at Amazon:
Bezos said that 95% of his time at Amazon is spent focusing on AI within the company, which he said is building 1,000 AI applications internally. One such application is a multimodal model that can process images, video, and text, The Information recently reported.
Looks like 95% isn’t enough, Jeff!
Joking aside, the casual consumer may ask themselves “Why are we constantly inundated with these garbage AI products that never seem to work as well as promised? Doesn’t it just degrade the promise of AI for people? If I bought an iPhone and it would send text messages to the wrong person half the time, wouldn’t that be considered a failed product?”
Good question, casual consumer! The answer is that the point is to inure everyone to the flaws of generative AI so you eventually just accept that weird monotone voices and misinformation are how you will consume content now. Get used to it piggies!
Happy Holidays from HTN!
Just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you wonderful readers for continuing to read my weekly blatherings this past year. There won’t be newsletters for the next two weeks; I’m sure you don’t need more email and historically open rates plummet at this time of year. I’ll be back in action January 6th!
In the meantime, if you’ve missed them, check out some of my personal favorite newsletters from 2025 linked below:
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
VR isn’t dead, it just smells funny. (link)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is 25 years old. Here’s how they shot it. (link)
A $1000-cheaper alternative to Apple’s Studio Display. (link)