The comment about using Google was more a curiosity. I hadn't seen the Variety link until yesterday, when I went to Google to reproduce the answer to verify it was from a text query, not an image query. Both Google AI and one of the top answers included that Variety link. When you mentioned it again, it strongly suggested you were using Google as your primary search method.

I think the right way to interpret the Variety link is that it's a single paragraph about trying to capture the feel of the comic using 3D software. As you saw from Charlie Brown holding a baseball, Shulz didn't go for a realistic look, but still conveys the sense of grasping. Modeling all five fingers all the time would not give the movie the right feel.

I wonder now if Google AI incorporates text from the top results into its answer.

"why is it wrong when the AI generated 4 fingers?"

The original discussion was when person X used AI to generate a image "in the style f Charles Shulz" where the Peanuts characters had 5 fingers, then person Y noted the use of 5 fingers instead of the 4 which is common in comics and cartoon, and quoted Google AI as saying Peanuts was traditionally drawn with 4 fingers.

I yesterday verified that Google AI would generate the same wrong answer with a text query, so it was not an image interpretation issue.

FWIW, after looking at a few hundred Peanuts cartoons, I can confidently say the AI generated image was not in the style of Schulz. The generated fingers were too realistic, and the background too complicated and detailed. :)

This for me is another example of why using primary sources should be the first thing to consider when fact checking - not LLMs (my experience is they are horrible at details), and not secondary sources (which have their own biases).

Not everything has easily-accessed primary sources, but many do. I think it's all too easy to fall into the trap of accepting the LLM answer because it feels right and is easy to generate. At https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2025/01/18/ai-art-just-r... you'll see someone asked about which river Marbot swam across to spy on the enemy camp. It replied "Elbe". Then I did a text search of an English translation of the book and found he used a boat to cross the Danube to spy on the enemy camp, and he swam into freezing waters to save an enemy soldier.

Again, do you ask the LLM to fact check itself every single time? If that's useful, why isn't it built into the prompt? Or, if you are supposed to double-check the LLM yourself, why would you consult a secondary source if the primary source is so easy to find and search? And in that case, why not just use the primary source?

Further, if you aren't in the habit of checking primary sources then you won't have the experience to know how to find and check primary sources.

Your first link was cited in the 2nd half of Google AI's answer, and one of the top Google answers, so I think you are using Google as your information source.

The large majority of the images you link to show kids with 5 fingers, as well as 5-fingered baseball gloves. The cases of four fingers are due to orientation.

Your "1." also shows Marcie with five fingers. You see Charlie Brown with 4 fingers because he's holding a baseball. In 2. he's also holding a baseball. You would not see 5 fingers on one side because doing so would look strange.

In your unlabeled "0." there are plenty of kids with 5 fingers. There are some with fewer, but they are holding things or drawn in way to suggest we are seeing the hand from the side.

I don't understand your hesitancy. Your own samples should be enough for you to decisively conclude that the Google AI's claim that Peanuts was "traditionally drawn with four fingers (or three fingers and a thumb) on each hand" is wrong. If not, it sure seems like you trust Google AI over your own eyes. Why are you so hesitant to agree?

My point is that you don't need to consult secondary sources when the primary sources are easily available.

When this came up a few days ago, I spot checked the complete works of Peanuts, from a collection on archive.org at https://archive.org/details/peanutscomics19502000/Volume%201... . The consistent pattern across the nearly 50 years of Peanuts is the kids have five fingers unless obscured by orientation or objects.

You can do that yourself, and triple-check that Google AI's answer is clearly wrong.

Thus, I think it's a good example of how fact checking with LLMs can lead people astray, and the large negative externalities I mentioned combined with its well-known tendencies to make incorrect statements make it a very poor starting point when the primary source, at least in this case, is so easy to access.

If most of the sources are wrong, and LLMs are being trained on those, isn't it logical that the latter will also likely output that same wrong information?

When do you know if most of the sources are wrong, unless you yourself know most of the sources are wrong?