Shame over AI has got us fumbling into 2025

Mistakes, mishaps and misuses we've spotted in the first days of this new year

Fable’s racist roast

Readers using a social media app for bookworms met with some unexpected and unwelcome critiques in a recap of their activities during 2024.

Fable employed AI to generate summaries of users’ reading habits and provide suggestions for future reads. But the BIPOC bookfluencer Tiana Trammell was shocked to find the following tip in her Fable roundup:

Your journey dives deep into the heart of Black narratives and transformative tales, leaving mainstream stories gasping for air. Don’t forget to surface for the occasional white author, okay?

The company admitted the gaffe with a video apology:

For the time being, we have removed the part of the model that playfully roasts the reader, and instead the model simply summarizes the user’s taste in books.

This blunder is a stark reminder for companies eager to integrate AI in their products to ensure ethical guardrails and human-monitored quality controls are in place before they hit send.

Meta’s cringe accounts

A few hours into the year, Facebook and Instagram got wider attention for having recently launched AI-generated user accounts, which allowed for users to engage in one-on-one chats with an avatar. But the initiative was hastily removed after a backlash.

“Liv” was one such virtual friend, who was described in her profile as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller ❤️🌈” The account included mommy inspo content complete with images of fictional children, and even fabricated charitable work.

Another sloppy fake was “Grandpa Brian,” a charming retired entrepreneur born to Caribbean immigrant parents. You could also chat with a handsome young relationship coach named “Carter,” at least until this imaginary companion ghosted his followers.

I’m guessing they will reappear in future, restyled and repurposed for a more welcome reception.

Netflix’s no-nos

AI shaming has become an increasingly popular online pastime, for which some companies can be counted on for continued fodder.

Netflix’s first misstep of 2025 involved an AI-generated thumbnail graphic promoting new episodes of the beloved Korean cooking show Chef and My Fridge (which is also known as Please Take Care of My Refrigerator).

Blurred imagery and classic AI “hallucinations”—door handles on the wrong side, or stacks of plates stored inside the fridge—add up to the kind of low-effort, unpolished work you’d expect from the chaos of random online experiments, and not from a premium subscription service.

I’m curious how the latest public ridicule stacks up against lazy AI fakery, and whether people have the power to improve the quality of what we see.