Did Amazon use AI art to promote its new ‘Fallout’ show? The controversy, explained

Let’s be frank: Amazon isn’t a company known for its ethical business practices. Whether it’s letting employees roast until they pass out, or forcing drivers to pee in bottles to complete arduous routes, the world’s largest retailer has plenty of controversies to answer to when it comes to its ways of working, some of which would make dystopian sci-fi writers cringe for being too on the nose. Their latest controversy — over a new ad for the television adaptation of Fallout — fits perfectly into this groove, so at least it’s nothing if not consistent.

Yesterday, Prime Video posted on their socials about the upcoming show, utilizing the famous Fallout aesthetic to what seemed like good effect on first glance. However, some online sleuths like @KennyNL noticed something slightly off about the artwork, and concluded it was probably AI-generated. Others quickly added more evidence to the theory by pointing out other ways in which the picture was nonsensical.

Amazon has a long history of ignoring humanity and treating people like cells in a spreadsheet in aim of achieving the nebulous goal of efficiency, so the fact that they’ve potentially used AI to create artwork for an advertisement isn’t the biggest surprise (even though they certainly have the budget to hire actual human beings). While the company hasn’t confirmed or denied that this image was created by a computer, it does show many of the hallmarks of AI-generated creative content. Namely, it’s a bit rubbish.

While AI drawing tools like Midjourney continue to improve — and will likely do so for the foreseeable future — the fact is that they still fail miserably at some basic tasks. Previously, one of the surefire ways to figure out if an image was AI-crafted was to look at things like hands, which computers (like humans) often struggle to render correctly. Nowadays, the issues remain, albeit smaller and more subtle, as the thread underneath the user’s original tweet pointed out.

Aside from the implication that Prime Video doesn’t even care enough about this show to do the bare minimum for marketing, there are plenty of other reasons why the use of AI by the company in this manner would be controversial. As mentioned above, a commission like this would have been a drop in the ocean to Amazon in terms of their revenue, but would have undoubtedly given an artist a much needed cash injection. Then there’s the fact that the company leaning more and more into AI will inevitably mean job losses in the future, most likely at the cost of losing quality in their services. But mostly, it’s about the lack of care being given to the show, which ties in well with the reasoning behind the current WGA and SAG strikes, which have the exploitative use of AI at their heart.

The real problem with AI being used to create — whether it’s art or writing or something else — is that it simply isn’t at the required level yet, and possibly might never be. However, in a distressing turn of events, tech bros are currently in charge of our collective online experience, and as a rule these people are incapable of understanding that people are complex things that can’t be gamed or hacked or coded. If anything, that fact seems to scare them, possibly because as a collective they’ve amassed enough wealth to cocoon themselves from things they don’t like, so when they discover something that they can’t control, it freaks them out. This is why they’ve wholeheartedly embraced AI art, as it makes them feel like one of the most fundamental yet impossible to understand aspects of the human experience — being creative — can be reduced to zeroes and ones, which in turn allows them to once again feel superior to those who have talents they simply don’t.

Or, perhaps we’re reading too much into it. But if Amazon did use AI in this manner, it’s definitely not a sign of good things to come. Maybe we’ll be in the Fallout world sooner than we thought after all.