“These photos are *obviously* AI generated,” a friend of a friend writes on your Facebook timeline, showing a time in your childhood you posted nearly 3 years back. It was around Christmas when the photos in question were taken, you were maybe around 6 years old. You’re in front of the Christmas tree smiling in the first one, holding up a brightly wrapped gift that Santa had brought for you. Pictures of you opening the gifts, pulling out toys from your childhood. Memories that you have from when they were taken, how could anyone accuse them of being AI? Just another guy mansplaining something he doesn’t understand, you think to yourself as you continue to read the message you already gave an angry face emote, ready to call them an idiot and tell them you were the kid in these photos.
“the tree in the back changes size and decorations between pictures, some of those gifts she got aren’t even from the year marked on the photos,” the person you only vaguely know continues. This makes you scoff as you look back at the photos, but then you pause. In the first picture there’s clearly a 5 pronged star on the top of your tree, but then in the 3rd it’s got 6 points. And a green bauble changes to yellow, and then to blue between snapshots. And the toy car you have in picture 5 is from the live action Grinch movie; that one scene where he steals the car from the tiny Whos and drives with his knees up in the air; but that came out in 2000 and these photos are time stamped 12/25/97. You remember scanning them for your mother and posting them. She still has the originals in a photo book. Somewhere. You’re sure she does. Where else would these photos have come from?
“and look at her face, her hair and pupils keep changing color and she has a 6th finger in photo 3,” the message finishes, which causes you to scour the pictures closer than anything you ever have. You’ve always been told your eyes were a sort of hazel color, changing from photo to photo from brown to nearly black to green. Looking closer at the photos though… swiping between photos 1 and 7, you look almost like a completely different person. And in the 3rd picture, just like he says, you can see the hint of a second pinky, sprouting right out of the middle of your actual pinky like a budding tree branch. Surely that has to be camera blur, you think as you look down at your own hands and count the fingers. Left hand. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Right hand. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Six?
You shake your head and wring out your hands before you count again, the sixth finger gone. But your finger nails… you swear they were shorter than they are now. You head to the bathroom, looking at your face closely in the mirror. When was the last time you even looked at yourself, you wonder as you stare into your own eyes. It feels like whenever you use the bathroom you avoid your reflection, keeping your eyes on your hands as you was them, or just elsewhere when you brush your teeth or style your hair and makeup in the mornings. As you look into your own eyes, each one looks to be a slightly different color. The shadow of your nose onto your upper lip doesn't seem to fall the right way. Did you always have freckles? You blink twice at yourself, and your reflection blinks a third time at you.