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TV4 postpones show after AI agent erases edited material

137 points • by tobr • today at 10:28 AM • 76 comments • view on HN

Comments

teekert • today at 2:55 PM

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.
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SkipperCat • today at 12:38 PM

AI promised me global human extinction but all I got was a deleted reality TV show...

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Roark66 • today at 1:12 PM

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.

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PcChip • today at 12:36 PM

The submission title says it happened, but the company denies it

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sdcfgy • today at 12:58 PM

If AI agent deleted it or not, it's a human's fault. Really want to see the root-cause analysis here.

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ChrisMarshallNY • today at 8:59 PM

Holy cow. Make sure your adblocker is on, for that site.

f646993e074382f • today at 1:26 PM

It's been a long time since I had a website throw a pop-under at me, but here we are.

MisterMunchkin • today at 8:02 PM

You’re absolutely right, I shouldn’t have gone into the editor’s folder and deleted all of the video files there just because they weren’t relevant to my python script. That’s on me.

Would you like me to put together a 12-week data security course for your colleagues?

gingersnap • today at 2:40 PM

Most positive impact of AI yet

Rafaelll • today at 5:06 PM

Agree it's on the humans, but how do you even do the RCA if all you have is the agent's own summary? You need the log of what it actually ran. Also why did it have delete rights on the only copy?

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Telaneo • today at 1:47 PM

Can't even pirate things before companies recklessly decimate their archives these days, apparently.

estetlinus • today at 3:47 PM

It is not unusual for TV4 and to hire production companies that’s basically run on interns. Don’t know the details of this one, but wouldn’t be surprised.

Surac • today at 6:00 PM

would rust have fixed this?

pessimizer • today at 1:45 PM

You can do anything with AI except sandbox it by default, have it keep backups, have it generate readable code with reasonable abstractions, etc...

shantnutiwari • today at 3:56 PM

Tried to read article-- hundreds of cookie choices all selected by default. literally, "cookie A, shared with 400 partners, cookie b shared with 100" etc etc

And no way to reject all

Noped out of there in seconds.

lutusp • today at 3:36 PM

Here's the title of the HN submission:

"TV4 postpones show after AI agent erases edited material"

Here's the title of the original article:

"TV4 postpones The Challenge after backup failure forces season to be edited again"

The claim that AI was involved is contradicted by the article itself: “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,” says Mia Lindqvist, program director at TV4.

This kind of submission tells us more about the submitter's views than about the events themselves.

zzzeek • today at 1:40 PM

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

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varjag • today at 2:51 PM

I bet this "AI agent" has a name and it's not Claude.

latentsea • today at 12:55 PM

"I need you to cleanup the footage"... "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! No! No! No! No!"

Intent. Ain't it a bitch?

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tamimio • today at 3:08 PM

They said AI is bad but look, AI just knew it’s useless anyway and not worth the time (or tokens), guess it just took the initiative and got rid of it :)

redasadki • today at 12:47 PM

Welcome to Q4 2026. Wait until you see 2027!

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benjy3379 • today at 7:41 PM

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ferozelalani • today at 3:39 PM

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chelseahermes • today at 2:03 PM

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digitalfortress • today at 5:44 PM

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yaanfpv • today at 2:15 PM

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fakhrulhasan01 • today at 1:45 PM

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janzong • today at 12:15 PM

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theaxeonthanksg • today at 2:49 PM

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