The first trailer for Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie looks great and people seem generally excited about it. However, a poster released for the movie online by Marvel led to some backlash as some believed it was created using AI image generation. But Marvel is pushing back and claims that’s not the case.

On January 4, Marvel and Disney released the first teaser for The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The day prior, the studio had teased the teaser with a teaser, one that included a very annoying (and overused) sound effect. But today we got a good look Marvel’s first family as portrayed by Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

Marvel

I’m digging the retro-futuristic vibes of the trailer and the Thing looks amazing, like Jack Kirby’s drawings fully realized in live action. But one of four posters released online for The Fantastic Four: First Steps features some oddities that led many to wonder if AI generation played a hand (thank you) in its creation. But according to The Wrap, a Marvel spokesperson claims that AI wasn’t used to create any of the Fantastic Four posters.

Here’s a high-res version of the poster that has caused all the backlash online. I got this from Marvel’s official social media accounts.

While fans online have spotted a few discrepancies, the biggest red flag according to many is in the middle left of the image. You can see a man holding a flag and it looks like he has only four fingers.

Let’s zoom in and check that out:

Hmmmm…it does look like this man is missing a finger. So does that automatically mean AI was used to create these posters? Well, I’m not sure about that. Let’s all put our pitchforks down for a moment, okay?

First off, the other three posters don’t seem to contain any obvious AI artifacts. It would be odd to only use AI on one poster. Secondly, some of the other discrepancies in the poster (like the same woman’s face popping up twice) can be explained by someone assuming that people weren’t going to zoom in on every pixel of every human in the image. They likely had a set number of assets and limited time, and reused some stuff in Photoshop when putting the poster together.

As for the hand with four fingers, here’s my theory: It’s possible that the pointer finger is resting unseen behind the flag pole to stabilize it while waving. It’s an odd way to hold a flag, I grant you, but it would explain the missing finger.

Or maybe AI was used in the poster’s creation by one artist who didn’t tell anyone and Marvel isn’t lying but instead is not fully aware of the situation. I’ll be curious to hear more about Finger-gate soon. I mean, Marvel did use AI to create the awful-looking opening credits for 2023’s Secret Invasion.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters on July 25 and kicks off the next phase of the MCU.

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