Nintendo Denies Promo Photos Were AI-Generated, Despite Some Weird Thumbs

11 hours ago 2

A smiling baby in blue pajamas holds a Super Mario plush toy while sitting on an adult's lap. The adult, wearing a light blue shirt, smiles at the baby. The baby’s hand is circled in red.

Nintendo has been forced to deny that it used AI to create a series of marketing photos after speculation grew that the company didn’t use a real photographer and models.

Since the gaming company launched My Mario, a toy range for children and parents, on Thursday, online commenters have pointed to the models’ fingers, which on inspection do look slightly unnatural.

A smiling child in pajamas stands holding hands with two adults, who are seated on the floor in a bright room with large windows and cheerful decor.

But Nintendo has strenuously denied the accusations, and one of the models, Brittoni O’myah Sinclair, who took part in the photo shoot tells IGN that “everything is real.”

“All the models were casted, and most of us worked with our real families,” says Sinclair. “We had to do auditions, and call backs to book this job.”

A smiling woman sits on the floor holding a happy baby dressed in blue pajamas, who is holding a plush Mario toy, in a bright, cozy nursery with a crib in the background.

The accusations mainly stem from one single frame in which the model’s thumb appears to bend backwards. Sinclair is not the model in that photo, but tells IGN that she saw the person in passing, and confirms she was a real person. Nintendo also confirmed that no AI was used in the photo shoot.

Some people have speculated that it was a good old-fashioned Photoshop mistake, but more likely the model has a double-jointed thumb. Some X users shared photos of their own double-jointed thumbs, proving that the digits can just look a little strange.

Hands and fingers are often one of the biggest giveaways of AI, this is because extremities are not just complex, but they also appear less frequently in AI training datasets, meaning the machine hasn’t seen as many photos of hands as it has say faces.

It is a sad fact of life that photographers on the internet face accusations on a daily basis that their work is AI. But it is perhaps not surprising given how good AI image generators have gotten in the past couple of years: both Google and OpenAI have free models that can produce images with an almost indistinguishable level of verisimilitude.

Image credits: Nintendo

Read Entire Article