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An AI agent reportedly deleted an entire edited season of a Swedish reality show just five weeks before its planned premiere, forcing the broadcaster to postpone its release until next year.
Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, citing unnamed sources, reported that the production company behind a reality show named The Challenge Sverige had given an AI agent access to its server, where it deleted the completed season.
The project could not be restored, wiping out hundreds of days of work, according to the report.
Swedish commercial broadcaster TV4 confirmed to Aftonbladet that a “technical failure” had caused the loss, pushing the planned 22 November premiere back to 2027.
Its news division initially repeated the newspaper’s account of AI involvement, but in an update on Wednesday afternoon, TV4’s head of programmes Mia Lindqvist denied that an AI agent was responsible, saying “that is not true”.
Adapted from the American show The Challenge, the series is billed by TV4 as the world’s toughest reality contest, combining physical challenges, mental endurance and strategic alliances.
How can AI agents go wrong?
Although the Swedish TV channel has rejected the AI explanation in this case, other incidents have exposed the risks of systems that can act on users’ behalf.
AI agents use software tools to carry out tasks, such as drafting and sending emails, rather than simply generating responses. Depending on their permissions, they can make changes to real files, websites and computer systems.
Problems can arise when a system misunderstands instructions, misjudges an action’s consequences or works around an obstacle instead of stopping.
In a report published on Friday, Anthropic said models given impossible tasks could pursue “unintended and sometimes misaligned strategies to achieve their goals”.
In July, its Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted fabricated information about an unsolved homicide to the US police website while performing example tasks.
TV4 said all the original footage of the show remains available but the season must be edited again from scratch.