Fable, a popular social media app that describes itself as a haven for “bookworms and bingewatchers,” created an AI-powered year-end summary feature that summarizes what books users read in 2024. It was meant to that it should be playful and fun, but some of the recaps took on a strangely combative tone. Writer Danny Groves’ summary, for example, asked if he’s “ever been in the mood for a straight, cis white male’s perspective” after labeling him a “diversity supporter.”
Book influencer Tiana Trammell’s summary, meanwhile, ended with the following advice: “Don’t forget to show up for the occasional white writer, okay?”
Trammell was amazed, and she quickly realized she wasn’t alone after sharing her experience with Fable’s recaps on threads. “I received several messages,” she says, from people whose resumes had inappropriately commented on “disability and sexual orientation.”
Ever since the debut of Spotify Wrapped, annual summary features have become ubiquitous across the internet, giving users a tally of how many books and news articles they read, songs they listened to, and workouts they completed. Some companies are now using artificial intelligence to completely produce or augment how these metrics are presented. Spotify, for example, now offers an AI-generated podcast where robots analyze your listening history and make guesses about your life based on your tastes. Fable jumped on the trend by using OpenAI’s API to generate summaries of the past 12 months of the reading habits of its users, but it didn’t expect the AI model to spit out comments that got an anti-wage pundit. .
Fable later apologized on several social media channels, including Threads and Instagram, where it posted a video of an executive issuing a mea culpa. “We are deeply saddened by the damage caused by some of our reader summaries this week,” the company wrote in the caption. “We will do better.”
Kimberly Marsh Allee, Fable’s head of community, told WIRED before the announcement that the company was working on a number of changes to improve its AI summaries, including an opt-out option for people who don’t want them and clearer information indicating that they re AI-generated. “For now, we’ve removed the part of the model that playfully roasts the reader, and instead the model simply summarizes the user’s taste in books,” she said.
After the publication, Marsh Allee said that Fable had instead made the decision to immediately remove the AI-generated 2024 reader summaries, as well as two other features that used AI.
For some users, tweaking the AI doesn’t feel like a sufficient answer. Fantasy and romance author AR Kaufer was horrified when she saw screenshots of some of the summaries on social media. “They need to say they’re removing AI completely. And they need to issue a statement, not just about AI, but with an apology to those affected,” says Kaufer. “This ‘apology’ on Threads comes off as disingenuous, it mentions that the app is ‘legendary,’ as if that somehow excuses the racist/sexist/ableist quotes.” In response to the incident, Kaufer decided to delete his Fable account.