AI Agent Blamed for Deleting Entire Upcoming Season of TV Show

Did a dog eat your homework? Or maybe an AI obliterated your files?

In a world of Claudes and Muses, it’s common for an AI agent to run amok, and even more fashionable to blame an AI when it all goes wrong.

The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reports one of the most incredible examples we’ve heard of this so far: an AI agent apparently deleted the entire upcoming season of a reality competition show called “The Challenge Sverige,” just weeks before it was supposed to premiere.

There’s no hope of recovering the files, the paper was told, so the production team at Mastiff will have to recut the entire season together from scratch.

According to the paper’s sources, the deletion happened after Mastiff allowed an AI agent into the server. With a year’s worth of work down the toilet, hundreds of people will now need to go in and cobble together the next season all over again, which was originally supposed to air on November 22.

TV4, the channel which was supposed to air the season, confirmed that it was pushing back the premier to next year after a “technical breakdown” but said it hadn’t heard about whether an AI agent was at fault for the deletion.

In a comment after the story was first published, though, TV4’s program director Mia Lindqvist tried to shift some of the blame away from AI, saying it wasn’t an “AI agent that acted independently” (via a machine translation from Swedish).

“On the other hand, most production companies use AI in their work processes these days, but that’s a completely different matter,” she continued. “In this case, the big problem is that their backup didn’t work and that means they have to recut everything from scratch. The raw material exists, so there is no problem, but of course it means that we lose time.”

In all, she said the season deletion came down to “human factor” and “not AI” — which, it’s worth noting, falls short of ruling out AI involvement.

Ahmed Behran, the show’s host, appeared to be in good spirts when Aftonbladet broke the news to him.

“Is it true?! I knew AI would be the death of me, this is just the beginning,” he told the newspaper, laughing.

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