AI image generators can certainly come out with some interesting results sometimes.
While some of the images that they put together from their databases can be impressive, featuring cavernous landscapes or sci-fi imagery, there are other things which image generators can find a bit more difficult.
Among them is a piece of anatomy which has plagued budding artists and illustrators since our ancestors first started putting paint to cave walls.
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This is, of course, the human hand.
Anyone who has ever tried to take up drawing or painting will know that hands are notoriously tricky to get right.
While there are of course techniques you can learn, it can take a lot of practice before your efforts start to look like actual hands rather than a pair of rubber gloves stuffed with jelly.
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It seems that AI is not immune to the curse that hands can bring to an illustration either.
Many earlier images generated by AI could be identified by the fact that figures' hands were not what you might expect, though this was sometimes fixed after a refresh of the image.
So, one brave soul decided to figuratively open up Pandora's box and give a prompt to the popular Midjourney AI to generate an image of 'a normal pair of human hands'.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well it seems that while it was generating the image of the hands, Midjourney decided that it would be a brilliant idea to add in something a little extra.
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Both of the hands in the pair that were generated came with an extra thumb, prompting some interesting questions.
It's particularly interesting because a bionic thumb has recently been trialled which gives people some extra dexterity.
Redditors were keen to share their thoughts on the unusual illustration.
One wrote: "Two thumbs, two middle fingers, and a base 12 counting system. This was a better timeline."
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Another replied: "I mean... if I had never seen a human being before I might also think these were much more normal, and convenient?"
A third posted: "I've yet to narrow down whether the problem is with its definition of 'hands' or its definition of 'normal' ... maybe its definition of 'human'?"
Finally, one drew attention to the fact that hands are in fact quite tricky to draw.
They responded: "The funny thing about AI’s difficulty with hands is I remember learning in art school that the most difficult thing to perfect in art is hands. So it’s interesting to see how bad of a job ai does knowing this."
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