Amazon nukes AI-generated Fallout recaps

The error-filled Fallout recaps, which unsurprisingly misreported key details meant to serve as simple refreshers of the show's first season, are no more.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  December 12, 2025 | 4:13pm
Courtesy of Prime Video
TV News Fallout
Amazon nukes AI-generated Fallout recaps

Never let a computer do a recapper’s job. Once again showcasing the limitations of a computer’s ability to follow the simple plot of a television show based on a long-running video game series, Prime Video has pulled its AI-generated recaps of Fallout‘s first season, per The Verge. Unsurprisingly, the recaps, which were designed to give fans a refresher before the second season drops, were filled with errors. Pulling posts from Reddit and X of viewers criticizing Prime’s state-of-the-art LLM, GamesRadar reported yesterday that the AI mistook Fallout‘s retro-future aesthetics for a show set in the 1950s, rather than the post-apocalyptic late-2070s. “Worse,” GamesRadar continues, “The Ghoul’s offer in the Fallout season 1 ending for Lucy (Ella Purnell) is framed as a ‘join or die’ situation, instead of a chance for them both to find the man ‘behind the wheel’ in New Vegas.”

But fans don’t have to worry about that anymore. The AI-generated recaps are gone. According to last year’s press release, these recaps were designed to give “brief, easy-to-digest summaries of full seasons of TV shows, single episodes, and even pieces of episodes, all personalized down to the exact minute of where you are watching.” But mostly, it was another excuse for a massive corporation to figure out what to do with this groundbreaking, over-valued technology that could finally solve corporate America’s number one issue: Paying human beings. A month before it announced these recaps, Amazon announced it was investing $500 million to develop “small, modular nuclear reactors” so Amazon Web Services could keep up with demand for generative-AI shit shows like this one and create a Fallout-like future for us to inhabit.

This is yet another AI-based blunder for the multi-trillion-dollar company that can’t afford to hire human editors, voice-over professionals, and voice actors. Last month, it pulled an AI-generated English dub track from the anime series Banana Fish due to fan backlash, IGN reports. What can we say? Television recaps have existed in various forms for decades and still require a human being to watch the show for them to be successful.

 
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