Ok, I have not seen any responses from anyone here that actually read TFA (which is almost like a fever dream, it does not deserve the A in TFA imho) but here is the whole F"A" (and it says AI did not delete material!):
The new season of TV4's reality show “The Challenge” has been postponed due to a technical failure. Large parts of the series have been deleted, Aftonbladet reports.
The newspaper reports that an edited season of the program was deleted by an AI agent, costing several hundred days of work. TV4 denies this.
“It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,” says Mia Lindqvist, program director at TV4, to Sveriges Radio’s P4 Stockholm.
A backup system at the production company failed, she says.
“This means they now have to edit everything from scratch.”
"The Challenge" was supposed to premiere on November 22. The series will now instead be shown “in late spring,” Mia Lindqvist says.
In "The Challenge", famous reality TV contestants face off in fierce competitions. The first season aired on TV4 in 2024.
Host Ahmed Berhan comments on the report in Aftonbladet.
“Is that true?! I knew AI would be the death of me. This is just the beginning,” he says.
Deletions happen, but that is what you have backups for. I do not understand how you can have hundreds of days of work and never test if your backups work.
Worth noting that TV4 has been in a vicious circle of cutbacks and savings for quite a few years now. Back when they were still on air it felt like there were more ad slots than broadcast content, pushing away ever more of what little viewership they still retained, they've been constantly cancelling popular shows in favor of cheaper ones. Though like I alluded to earlier, they aren't as far as I know even broadcast on air anymore.
I very much get the sense they're dismantling the furniture and using it as firewood. It feels like the sort of place that very well could fire the entire IT staff and give that responsibility to the CEO's nephew and claude code instead. Not saying that is what transpired, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Well, if you have followed the latest trends, all established practices hage gone out the window to be replaced with "an agent with a prompt and a prayer"
There is A LOT of garbage IT staff out there. A lot. Especially when it's outsourced MSP. I've walked into environments, where the backup software just repeatedly show failed jobs for MONTHS. No one checking on anything, email alerts if they are even configured, dumping into a mailbox no one checks. It's pathetic.
As a new starter to the team I was flooded with alert emails every few minutes. When I asked what the deal was, was promptly given a bunch of mail rules every other team member used to dump them all into another folder they never looked at.
In a previous employer, the outsourced ERP (Navision) administrator, after finding the MS SQL Integrity Checks of the database were failing in the periodical maintenance tasks, he just disabled the integrity checks. Magic! Errors fixed!
> I do not understand how you can have hundreds of days of work and never test if your backups work
You outsource it, then you file a P4 ticket to test those "just in case" that will be done in a future sprint (never), but all of you more or less trust the outsourcing partner actually has their shit together.
Personally I wouldn't trust any backup system without also testing and verifying the restore, but I've worked in plenty of places where their main database is automatically backed up by AWS or whatever, and no one cares to test the restore because "Why would it be broken if it's provided by AWS?!" and similar opinions drown out the more careful ones.
Not really. If you read between the lines you see there's a story she's avoiding.
> It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material
Notice the wording. It's a half-truth response. She's probably correct, but the accusation wasn't that a "some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material". Just a AI deleted the material.
Then backup failed as the reason. That's not THE reason. You don't need backups unless you lose your data. How did the data get lost?
The denial is from the TV4, not the production company, and it's not so much a denial as just saying "we didn't hear that AI did it", TV4 confirms the entire final cut is gone:
> Det som vi har fått från produktionen är att det har varit ett tekniskt haveri som har gjort att material som är klippt har försvunnit och att vi därför måste klippas om på nytt. Och att vi därför behöver skjuta fram premiären till 2027, säger Ludvig Ternstedt, pressansvarig för ”The challenge”.
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,” says Mia Lindqvist, program director at TV4, to Sveriges Radio’s P4 Stockholm.
> A backup system at the production company failed, she says. “This means they now have to edit everything from scratch.”
To be honest, neither "Sweden Herald" nor Aftonbladet are "reputable sources" when it comes to reporting on news, technical details or even details at all. The latter is a tabloid in fact, and the former borderline "random online newsblog", I wouldn't lend too much credence to them.
SVT is probably a more trustworthy source (in this case) and their quote is this:
> “There was a technical glitch during production that caused the edited footage to be lost, so now it has to be re-edited. That’s why we need to postpone the premiere until 2027. However, it’s not true that some malicious AI agent acted on its own and deleted the footage,” writes Ludvig Ternstedt, TV4’s press officer for “The Challenge,” to SVT. - https://www.svt.se/kultur/tekniskt-haveri-tv4-skjuter-upp-re...
They say "Elak" rather than "Ond", which I'd translate as "Malicious" rather than "Evil", FWIW.
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,”
That's odd, when I viewed the article the quote was them saying it wasn't 'some evil AI agent' but in the literal minutes since the quote has been replaced with one saying 'independent AI agent'. Wayback Machine confirms this. When I initially read it the quote could be plausibly interpreted as 'well it wasn't some evil AI agent that did this'.
Pedantic, but 'Stay at home' generally refers to someone who's chosen to not partake in the work-force, and instead raise a child/children. "Stay at home mom working remotely" is paradoxical, I think.
As a former stay at home Dad, I endorse the above message. Also, FYI, there is no trouble to fill the days with hard and rewarding tasks. (The question I would get from men at parties was always how I filled my time; with a 1 and 5 year old and a politician spouse!)
Root cause - guardrails "unexpectedly" were neither guards nor rails. Who knew that asking a stochastic program "pretty please" is not a strict instruction or a barrier whatsoever.
Also, communications. People absolutely suck at it.
I swear, half the time I see people complaining about AI failing do what they meant in some absurd way, the conversation closely resembles those jokes about married couple arguing over bullshit, because one person wanted XY, but asked for XW, and their spouse interpreted it as XZ.
Are you talking about the misinformation that AI deleted the TV show, while the channel themselves deny this? This sort of misinformation will continue to increase? Shocker
Ok, I have not seen any responses from anyone here that actually read TFA (which is almost like a fever dream, it does not deserve the A in TFA imho) but here is the whole F"A" (and it says AI did not delete material!):
The new season of TV4's reality show “The Challenge” has been postponed due to a technical failure. Large parts of the series have been deleted, Aftonbladet reports.
The newspaper reports that an edited season of the program was deleted by an AI agent, costing several hundred days of work. TV4 denies this.
A backup system at the production company failed, she says. "The Challenge" was supposed to premiere on November 22. The series will now instead be shown “in late spring,” Mia Lindqvist says.In "The Challenge", famous reality TV contestants face off in fierce competitions. The first season aired on TV4 in 2024.
Host Ahmed Berhan comments on the report in Aftonbladet.
AI promised me global human extinction but all I got was a deleted reality TV show...
You gotta learn to walk before you run oO
may be it's trying to do some good by deleting these shows.
I bet this "AI agent" has a name and it's not Claude.
Deletions happen, but that is what you have backups for. I do not understand how you can have hundreds of days of work and never test if your backups work.
Worth noting that TV4 has been in a vicious circle of cutbacks and savings for quite a few years now. Back when they were still on air it felt like there were more ad slots than broadcast content, pushing away ever more of what little viewership they still retained, they've been constantly cancelling popular shows in favor of cheaper ones. Though like I alluded to earlier, they aren't as far as I know even broadcast on air anymore.
I very much get the sense they're dismantling the furniture and using it as firewood. It feels like the sort of place that very well could fire the entire IT staff and give that responsibility to the CEO's nephew and claude code instead. Not saying that is what transpired, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
They stopped in January: https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/eM3mQa/tv4-slutar-sanda...
At least now they tested the backup/restore and now know it didn't work.
A backup shouldn't be considered working until a restore (plus checksum of the complete file tree) has been successfully tested.
I wonder if their editing nas died and fried everything on it. If you only backup your backup every couple of months I can see it.
Well, if you have followed the latest trends, all established practices hage gone out the window to be replaced with "an agent with a prompt and a prayer"
Wouldn't surprise me if the editing process involves a lot of files on cheap storage with little to no backup.
There is A LOT of garbage IT staff out there. A lot. Especially when it's outsourced MSP. I've walked into environments, where the backup software just repeatedly show failed jobs for MONTHS. No one checking on anything, email alerts if they are even configured, dumping into a mailbox no one checks. It's pathetic.
As a new starter to the team I was flooded with alert emails every few minutes. When I asked what the deal was, was promptly given a bunch of mail rules every other team member used to dump them all into another folder they never looked at.
In a previous employer, the outsourced ERP (Navision) administrator, after finding the MS SQL Integrity Checks of the database were failing in the periodical maintenance tasks, he just disabled the integrity checks. Magic! Errors fixed!
what do you need backup for, when you regen everything in 5 seconds with AI. perhaps they replaced backup with AI too.
> I do not understand how you can have hundreds of days of work and never test if your backups work
You outsource it, then you file a P4 ticket to test those "just in case" that will be done in a future sprint (never), but all of you more or less trust the outsourcing partner actually has their shit together.
Personally I wouldn't trust any backup system without also testing and verifying the restore, but I've worked in plenty of places where their main database is automatically backed up by AWS or whatever, and no one cares to test the restore because "Why would it be broken if it's provided by AWS?!" and similar opinions drown out the more careful ones.
Most positive impact of AI yet
The submission title says it happened, but the company denies it
Not really. If you read between the lines you see there's a story she's avoiding.
> It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material
Notice the wording. It's a half-truth response. She's probably correct, but the accusation wasn't that a "some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material". Just a AI deleted the material.
Then backup failed as the reason. That's not THE reason. You don't need backups unless you lose your data. How did the data get lost?
The denial is from the TV4, not the production company, and it's not so much a denial as just saying "we didn't hear that AI did it", TV4 confirms the entire final cut is gone:
> Det som vi har fått från produktionen är att det har varit ett tekniskt haveri som har gjort att material som är klippt har försvunnit och att vi därför måste klippas om på nytt. Och att vi därför behöver skjuta fram premiären till 2027, säger Ludvig Ternstedt, pressansvarig för ”The challenge”.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/31oE8A/the-challeng...
Yes, but the submission article (https://swedenherald.com/article/tv4-postpones-the-challenge...) is after that Aftonbladet article, and in the submission, they deny it's because of AI and claims it's because one of the backup systems failed...
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,” says Mia Lindqvist, program director at TV4, to Sveriges Radio’s P4 Stockholm.
> A backup system at the production company failed, she says. “This means they now have to edit everything from scratch.”
To be honest, neither "Sweden Herald" nor Aftonbladet are "reputable sources" when it comes to reporting on news, technical details or even details at all. The latter is a tabloid in fact, and the former borderline "random online newsblog", I wouldn't lend too much credence to them.
SVT is probably a more trustworthy source (in this case) and their quote is this:
> “There was a technical glitch during production that caused the edited footage to be lost, so now it has to be re-edited. That’s why we need to postpone the premiere until 2027. However, it’s not true that some malicious AI agent acted on its own and deleted the footage,” writes Ludvig Ternstedt, TV4’s press officer for “The Challenge,” to SVT. - https://www.svt.se/kultur/tekniskt-haveri-tv4-skjuter-upp-re...
They say "Elak" rather than "Ond", which I'd translate as "Malicious" rather than "Evil", FWIW.
So a non-malicious agent made an error or misinterpreted instructions, which is what I would have expected.
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,”
That's odd, when I viewed the article the quote was them saying it wasn't 'some evil AI agent' but in the literal minutes since the quote has been replaced with one saying 'independent AI agent'. Wayback Machine confirms this. When I initially read it the quote could be plausibly interpreted as 'well it wasn't some evil AI agent that did this'.
And they needed the backup because...?
You don't get to blame AI if it irreversibly deletes your data.
You either didn't have backup or didn't contain your agent to a place it cannot do irreversible harm.
Actually Toy Story 2 was also (almost) lost because backups were not working for month+: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story_2#Troubled_productio...
A stay at home mom working remotely (In 1998!) to take care of newborn had a copy on her computer...
Pedantic, but 'Stay at home' generally refers to someone who's chosen to not partake in the work-force, and instead raise a child/children. "Stay at home mom working remotely" is paradoxical, I think.
This doesn't take away from your point, though.
As a former stay at home Dad, I endorse the above message. Also, FYI, there is no trouble to fill the days with hard and rewarding tasks. (The question I would get from men at parties was always how I filled my time; with a 1 and 5 year old and a politician spouse!)
Primary source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50085259
It's been a long time since I had a website throw a pop-under at me, but here we are.
If AI agent deleted it or not, it's a human's fault. Really want to see the root-cause analysis here.
My guess on root cause: They did not actually test restore from backups.
So most likely nothing new under the sun.
Root cause - guardrails "unexpectedly" were neither guards nor rails. Who knew that asking a stochastic program "pretty please" is not a strict instruction or a barrier whatsoever.
Can't even pirate things before companies recklessly decimate their archives these days, apparently.
You can do anything with AI except sandbox it by default, have it keep backups, have it generate readable code with reasonable abstractions, etc...
"I need you to cleanup the footage"... "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! No! No! No! No!"
Intent. Ain't it a bitch?
Also, communications. People absolutely suck at it.
I swear, half the time I see people complaining about AI failing do what they meant in some absurd way, the conversation closely resembles those jokes about married couple arguing over bullshit, because one person wanted XY, but asked for XW, and their spouse interpreted it as XZ.
"See, it's sentient! It misinterpreted my prompt!".
I bet my wife thinks that of me sometimes :).
everyone knows "we lost all the data and the backup failed" is an entirely new problem introduced by AI. guess they shouldn't have used AI!
/sarcasm
The issue is that no matter how well trained the AI is, this has happened.
With humans, training usually precludes this
Maybe the problem is that AI did the "backup" and now didn't remember how to restore.
Welcome to Q4 2026. Wait until you see 2027!
Are you talking about the misinformation that AI deleted the TV show, while the channel themselves deny this? This sort of misinformation will continue to increase? Shocker