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e immediately checked and the gentleman on the photo (if it really were a photo, not a computer-generated image) did indeed have an extra thumb. This additional appendage had escaped the notice of the entire editorial team as well as our excellent design department. Our immediate reaction was to flag up this hallucination to the brand that had supplied the image.
Which we would have done - and looked like complete fools - had our eagle-eyed Chairman not stepped in. “That’s Hrithik Roshan, one of Indian cinema’s biggest stars. As well as being hugely popular, Hrithik Roshan has a rare physical characteristic: polydactyly. He was born with a second thumb on his right hand, which he’s never tried to hide and which hasn’t stood in the way of a brilliant acting career.”
Oof! We’d narrowly avoided a dusting down from Rado, a brand firmly established in India and whose ambassador for the subcontinent is none other than the charismatic Hrithik Roshan himself. And we’d spared ourselves the mockery of Indians, who are perfectly au fait with their favourite actor’s polydactyly.
What, we wondered, could we learn from this mix-up. Probably the one and only takeaway is that AI has plunged us into an irretrievable state of confusion. That flawless face and sculpted body, that incredible exploit, are they real or an AI invention? Whose hallucinations are they? Yours, or those of the machine that gave you six fingers, one leg shorter than the other, wrinkles too pronounced to be real or, on the contrary, a face too angelic to be true – but could be. What’s left of your identity?
Go figure!
Already, several decades ago, when computer graphics started to spread, we made it a rule at Europa Star never to publish computer renderings of watches; only products that existed in the “real” world. At first we had no trouble differentiating between real and fake, but as the quality of CGI improved, it quickly became impossible to distinguish one from the other. Is that a genuine watch, a finished product, or is it simply an idea, a work in progress, no different to something I might bring to life at my kitchen table, courtesy of AI? We have reached a new level.
So, is that sixth thumb for real or is it an hallucination? Without a definite answer, all we can do is trust our sixth sense.
