... the Neanderthal has remarkable technology in the form of paintbrushes with the bristles bound in a formed metal ferrule. Shiny no less, as if chrome plated. Unfortunately there was an injury and his left hand only has three fingers. The second guy has a strange side-facing bellybutton.

It's remarkable how with modern technology we can send cameras back in time to capture such images in high definition.

I believe it was only 500 millennia or so ago.

AI produced by and for people too ignorant to catch ridiculousness like the modern art paint brushes, as pointed out.
Using AI is one thing; believing AI is another, accepting AI insanity is beyond the pale.

Thank you!

Seems chauvinistic to downplay their role in the development of modern humanity. Hell, I’m walking around with segments of their DNA right now.

more intelligent than previously believed.

And yes, the old attitudes were chauvinistic.

of animals are one of the things that thrills me most. Each group even has its own language, and (I'm thinking of birds right now), is more than simply "danger!" or "food!"

I'm glad that the meat industry is going plant based. Even inveterate meateaters should be hesitant once they discover how truly sentient and emotionally alive animals are, IMNSHO.

Thank you.

Getty image at the top of the article.

I've seen some very upset messages posted on Twitter by real artists who have done science illustrations for years and are now very unhappy at seeing AI illustrations that get so much wrong being substituted instead. And I'm not talking about the even more ludicrous images showing up in "science" articles generated entirely or almost entirely by AI, like the one at https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218687511 . Some magazines, not just journals, are trying to save a few bucks with bad AI art.

When OpenAI introduced its AI video tool, Sora, earlier this year, there were posts raving about one short "photorealistic" video of ants underground, and how wonderful Sora would be for educational science videos.

The ants had 4 legs.

(Dick Blick is a chain of art-supply stores)

I found one image particularly ludicrous, with the artist holding a fistful of what appears to be more modern paintbrushes like Bob Ross.

none of them emulated the pseudo-artist Thomas Kinkade - ‘painter of light’.

He couldn't help himself, could he?

How can we be sure he's really gone?

What a vision starts to form when you start to imagine his final resting place! Will there be a stream?

Kinkade is generally considered a hack in the art world, so hundreds of these photoshops populate the intertubes. My personal favorite showed an idyllic scene that featured a pretty bridge crossing a bubbly, babbling brook. Some wag added a pumper truck hauling toxic waste across the bridge. Sorry, I have a dark sense of humor.

illustrating early people in other articles all looking unbearably stupid. Thought of checking Google images for pictures they'd collected of other "cave people" as they painted or drew on walls, also. Was interested in seeing how many of them were so horrifically stupid-looking. You may have felt disgusted, also, by how profoundly repulsive and hideous they have almost always been shown as being, too! I didn't see any in Google as grotesque as the ones which usually pop up representing Neanderthals.





Usually the artist takes great pains in informing us that people so long ago wouldn't look nearly as "evolved" as we do!

Love this stuff!