Nintendo, a company that regularly brings in billions of dollars each year, could have easily afforded to set up a real photoshoot to promote its upcoming line of My Mario toys coming to its New York City and San Francisco stores in February, but it looks like it might have used genAI instead. At least, that’s what people think after looking at the photos of parents playing with their kids and the Mario toys.
I admit, the AI witch hunt has gotten out of hand, so when I looked at the supposed AI images, I had several moments of doubt. Maybe some people’s hands and fingers just look like that, and the growing fear that AI art is infecting everything around me has completely distorted my idea of what hands look like? Maybe it’s possible for a thumb to twist like that, or for a child’s hand to squish into their mother’s like we see here.
I caught myself looking at my own hands multiple times while writing this just to make sure I know what hands actually look like, just to test the limits of my mind as I wondered if an image of a woman’s fingers looking almost twice as long as her palms to hold a tablet was out of the realm of reality. I’ve got tiny hands, so maybe I’m not the best judge.
Whatever the case, fans have already run with the assumption that these images are AI-generated in the replies to Nintendo’s social media posts on Facebook and X.
Introducing My Mario, a collection of products, games, and experiences inspired by Mario and his Mushroom Kingdom friends, designed for young children and their parents. Select My Mario products will be available at Nintendo NEW YORK and Nintendo SAN FRANCISCO on Feb 19. pic.twitter.com/Dazl6sHLM9
— Nintendo NY | SAN FRANCISCO (@NintendoStoreUS) January 8, 2026
People’s willingness to just point (anatomically correct) fingers at just about anything has made me more gun shy about tossing out the accusation that something is AI-generated unless it’s incredibly obvious, because plenty of real art and photography has been thrown under the bus as the internet fights ghosts. Well, when in doubt, we ask the source. We’ve reached out to Nintendo for comment on this story, and will post an update if we hear back.
Update, 1/9/26, 4:55 p.m. Eastern: A Nintendo representative said in a statement to Kotaku that it didn’t use AI to create these images.
