Nordea’s toe image became a “toxic cocktail” due to awkward timing, the professor estimates

Different The kid in the Nordea ad that was in the papers for the last week was thought to be created by artificial intelligence, but the picture turned out to be genuine.

A child with six toes has polydactyly. Nevertheless, in the messaging service X, the image was believed to be created by a machine, because artificial intelligence usually messes up its limbs.

Such media criticism indicates a clear increase in “general suspicion”, comments the professor of social ethics Jaana Hallamaa from the University of Helsinki.

“Toenails are the most familiar image to everyone, and few people have seen more than five of them on their feet. Then when such an image comes and it is known that images can be created with artificial intelligence, such a conclusion is made.”

To the point a temporal coincidence turns on. Nordea has been in the headlines due to IT problemsso in Hallamaa’s opinion the human mind associates a special image with information technology.

“If this had been in an advertisement for a design company, it would have been thought to be made with artificial intelligence, but it would not have aroused disapproval.”

According to the professor, people consider banks to be reliable and truthful.

“At this point, when they’ve had network problems, the cocktail has turned toxic.”

From Hallamaa the tone of social media speaks of the fact that we live in a time where the image can no longer be trusted. It has come about relatively quickly, as realistic image creation software broke through in a couple of years.

“Artificial intelligence researchers fear that there will soon be a situation where the data on the network is actually corrupted.”

On the Internet, the flow of images created by both humans and machines is increasing, of which the latter will soon eat the former.

“And we have no way of verifying or proving them reliable.”

Bridge times the picture was genuine. Hallamaa asks what’s the harm in having six toes?

“It’s just a variation, and we collide with our concept of beauty and our concept of normality,” the professor reflects.

“Once you get used to it, there’s nothing more wonderful.”

Based on information from the international image bank, the child appearing in Nordea’s photos is known to be the photographer’s own child at the age of one month who lives in the United States.

Since then, he has been photographing the child for a couple of years, and the toddler plays in the photo series just like anyone else.