Blue Archive Support Artist Accused of Using AI After Drawing 6 Fingers — Line Art Drops a Plot Twist, But Yostar's Suspicious Crop Raises More Questions

Before AI art became a thing, an artist drawing an extra finger would've earned a chuckle and the nickname 'Six-Fingered Swordsman' — but in 2024, an extra digit is basically a scarlet letter screaming 'AI DETECTED.' That's exactly what happened to the artist behind a Blue Archive activity support illustration, who found themselves at the center of an AI art witch hunt.

It started when the official BA (碧蓝档案) Twitter posted a promotional illustration for a new event (Yostar regularly commissions artists to create these for social media promotion — they're not added to the game itself). The official version looked perfectly fine, but when the artist posted the full uncut version on their own account, eagle-eyed netizens spotted that the character キララ's right hand in the bottom-left corner had six fingers. Cue the AI accusations spreading like wildfire.

But the plot thickened quickly. Instead of going silent, the artist pulled the ultimate uno reverse card — they posted the raw line art from the sketching phase. And sure enough, the six-finger mistake was there from the very beginning, pencil strokes and all. This doesn't technically rule out AI assistance 100%, but it strongly suggests this was a genuine human brain-fart rather than an AI hallucination that slipped through.

Here's where it gets really interesting though. Looking at Yostar's official post versus the artist's original, players noticed that the publisher's version conveniently cropped out the problematic hand entirely. The burning question: did Yostar catch the six-finger issue during review and just quietly cut it out without telling the artist? Nobody knows, and Yostar hasn't said a word about it.

Even after the line art evidence dropped, some keyboard warriors wouldn't let it go. Reports came in that people were still spamming the artist's replies demanding more 'proof' — but when asked exactly what evidence they wanted, they went radio silent. One commenter noted that the most persistent accuser had a 'very sus profile,' hinting at possible trolling or bandwagon rage-baiting.

Fellow artists jumped into the thread to share their own horror stories. One self-identified artist wrote: 'The sketch being there proves it was just a brain fart. I swap left and right hands in literally every piece. I now constantly compare my hands while drawing — and still draw them wrong, only getting called out by friends in the group chat.'

Others brought up the legendary case of Bu'er Q (卜尔Q), the Alchemy Stars (白夜极光) artist whose AI-generated art was caught red-handed. The story goes: the game's art cleanup team spent an all-nighter fixing the obvious AI mistakes, only for Bu'er Q to turn around and post the original unedited version themselves — a spectacular self-own that became industry folklore. Commenters noted the irony that because early AI art was so bad at hands, modern AI-assisted artists now hyper-fixate on hands and feet, making them 'less likely to have hand bugs than traditional artists.'

One user delivered the most logically sound take of the thread: 'AI tends to draw 6 fingers ✓ — Everyone who draws 6 fingers uses AI ✗ — Otherwise Japan's been doing AI art for decades.' Another dropped the classic meme: Humans trash AI for drawing bad hands. AI asks, 'So you can all draw hands perfectly, right?' Humans: *visible hesitation*

Some also pointed out structural issues with the torii gate in the illustration, saying it 'looks like a light rail line.' But in the heat of the AI discourse, that detail got completely overshadowed. As of now, the artist hasn't issued any further statement beyond the line art, and Yostar remains silent on the suspicious crop job.