Marvel’s Loki Season 2 Poster Likely Incorporated AI-Generated Stock Photo

See the clock in the background? At first glance it looks fine; maybe it even fits into the out-of-this-plane oddness associated with Loki and the Time Variance Authority. But take a closer look—disconnected lines, strange digital artifacts, symbols that seem to be utterly formless, and… the Roman numeral “IIII.” Well, that’s not right, is it?

X/Twitter user and artist Katria originally posted about her concerns regarding the image’s possible AI origins last week. She even dug out the background image on Shutterstock to better show the hallmarks of AI-generated art. The user, Svarun, has a massive stock of photos that are also more or less AI soup, and while there is some plausible deniability here, any graphic designer worth their salt should have been able to figure out that the “Time Spiral” didn’t look right. At the very least they should have tried to fix “IIII” to “IV.”

Additional reporting from the Verge notes that Shutterstock requires users to categorize any AI stock with special tags. Svarun has done nothing to designate this or any other stock art available on their page as AI-generated. Another X/Twitter user, Angel, ran the image through four apps that check for hallmarks of AI-generated work, and found that three of the four programs stated it was AI-generated.

These suspicions come after Marvel’s highly criticized decision to use AI-generated opening credits for previous Disney+ series Secret Invasion. In an interview with Polygon, Secret Invasion’s directer-showrunner Ali Selim admitted he didn’t “really understand” how AI generated images work. He’s clearly not the only one.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.