Sora the Explorer

After writing them, I needed a few visuals to support the written content, so I decided to give ChatGPT’s Sora a go and create some illustrations to complement the pieces.

The prompt:
“Create me an illustration that displays community and working together within the creative and tech world, in a visual style that complements https://www.goodship.agency”

On the surface, it created some nice visuals that broadly met the needs of the articles. But something wasn't quite right, look at those hands!

So I posted one of these images yesterday on LinkedIn, linking to one of my blogs to see the reaction and the comment about the hands and fingers—and so far, I’ve only had one DM about it. So, do we now just accept these anomalies?

Hands – why can’t you draw hands?

On closer inspection, you can spot some visual quirks. In one of the images, there are random hands and extra fingers.

‍

So why does AI struggle with generating hands?

If you look at most cartoons—like The Simpsons, Family Guy, or Bob’s Burgers—the characters only have three fingers. That’s because it’s easier for animators to draw and move them.

But with AI, at this point in time, there are five key reasons behind these E.T.-style fingers:

1. Hands are structurally complex

A hand has 27 bones, many joints, tendons, and muscles, giving it a wide range of motion.

Fingers can bend, spread, overlap, curl, or twist in countless ways, and slight changes in perspective make them look completely different.

2. Hands are highly variable

Everyone’s hands are unique — different shapes, sizes, skin tones, nail types, rings, tattoos, and more.

That variability makes it harder for AI to generate consistent or anatomically correct hands without a deep understanding of human anatomy.

3. Training data issues

Historically, AI was trained on datasets with fewer well-labelled or high-quality images of hands (people often crop or obscure hands in photos).

AI learned a lot from faces, but hands were underrepresented or not annotated as precisely.

4. Occlusion and perspective

Fingers often overlap or are partially hidden.

AI models might "guess" incorrectly how many fingers should show or where they should be.

5. Lack of reasoning

AI doesn't inherently understand anatomy. It generates based on patterns in data, not physics or biology.

Without explicit anatomical constraints, it can easily produce six fingers, missing knuckles, or warped thumbs.

Humans or AI?

If you're looking for an illustration that’s unique to your project or business, remember there’s a highly skilled network of creatives in our community—and they should be your first port of call.

But remember AI is a great tool, but human creatives still have the edge.