Amazon pulls AI recap from Fallout TV show after it made several mistakes

2 hours ago

Liv McMahonTechnology reporter

Amazon A woman with long black hair stands in the middle of a steampunk-like room. There are pipes and girders visible with yellow and grey colours. The woman has wide eyes and is wearing a deep blue jumpsuit.

Amazon has pulled a video recap made with artificial intelligence (AI) from its hit TV show Fallout after users said it got several facts wrong about the series.

The firm said in November it was testing the “first-of-its-kind” tool in the US to help viewers catch up on some of its shows on streaming service Prime Video – including Fallout, its adaptation of the popular video game franchise.

But it has since disappeared from the site after users highlighted mistakes in its video summarising the events of Fallout season one – including claiming one scene was set more than 100 years earlier than it was.

The BBC has approached Amazon for comment.

The move to apparently press pause on its AI-powered recaps was first reported by tech publication The Verge.

Amazon said in November the recaps would be available to users as an experimental feature, and only “for select English-language Prime Original series in the US”.

“Video Recaps use AI to summarise a show’s most pertinent plot points with a theatrical-quality video that includes narration, dialogue, and music,” it said.

But fans eagerly awaiting the release of the next series of Fallout on 17 December highlighted errors introduced in its video recap for its first series.

Users on Reddit said a clip showing The Ghoul – one of the show’s central characters, played by actor Walton Goggins – was wrongly described in the AI narration as a “1950s flashback”.

Despite the clip’s retro aesthetic, it actually depicts a scene in 2077 – something fans of the series would know instantly.

Fans also said the recap incorrectly summarised a scene between The Ghoul and protagonist Lucy MacLean, played by Ella Purnell, altering their dynamic in a way that would confuse new viewers.

It joins a long list of errors have being introduced when using generative AI tools to produce content summaries.

In early 2025, Apple suspended an AI feature summarising notifications after it drew complaints for repeated mistakes in its summaries of news headlines.

The BBC was among the groups to complain about the feature, after an alert generated by Apple’s AI falsely told some readers Luigi Mangione, who has been charged in the US with killing UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, had shot himself.

Google’s AI Overviews, which aim to provide concise summaries of search results, have also come under criticism and mockery for errors.