AIInsight

Amazon’s Fallout movie has been in the works for a few years now. Die-hard fans have been eagerly awaiting an update ever since the first announcement. The TV series is based on the popular post-apocalyptic gaming franchise of the same name and will broadcast on Amazon Prime sometime in 2024.

Unfortunately, eager fans got more than they bargained for last week when Amazon released a poster to promote the Fallout series. Users were quick to point out that the illustration contains several oddities, suggesting it was created by AI.

At first glance, everything seems in order. The illustration depicts Vault Boy, the Fallout franchise’s iconic mascot, on a billboard for pre-war Los Angeles. On closer inspection, however, the image contains some strange anomalies.

For example, why does the red car in the foreground have two front ends? Why do so many of the buildings in the background have no windows or doors? Why are there people walking in the middle of the road? One eagle-eyed user even noticed that the individual underneath the mascot’s left hand appears to have three legs.

If you’ve been keeping up to date on Generative AI, you’re likely already familiar with AI art. You provide a prompt, pick a style, and hit generate to get a ready-made image. It’s fast, cheap, and completely unpredictable—entirely like buying a burger from one of America’s fast food chains.

The inherent problems with AI mean it’s usually seen as a cheap way to create illustrations without paying an actual designer to do the job correctly. Amazon, presumably, has no shortage of cash to blow on fancy graphics. Users were quick to point out their frustration that a multi-billion dollar company couldn’t be bothered to hire an artist to design their illustration.

If Amazon was intent on doubling down in defence of its poster, I’m sure they could play off the art as some sort of surrealist work of genius. Perhaps the image is an interpretive masterpiece revealing the effects of taking one too many Day Trippers or other Fallout universe pre-war chem.

Unfortunately, even if Amazon played the ‘it was all intentional’ card, I’m not convinced the internet would let them off the hook that easily.