Square Enix commented after accusations that AI had been used to make art for Kingdom Hearts Collection. Their position: the piece was hand-drawn by the dev team, and the oddities came from a plain human mistake (hum.).
The chatter started when the company revealed the Kingdom Hearts Collection compilation in June — a re-release headed to Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2 this October. It bundles Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind — basically the mainline titles with their spin-offs included.
The Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] features KH 1.5+2.5, 2.8 and III + Re Mind (DLC)! Launching October 8 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC. pic.twitter.com/fz7r1dtIbJ
That tweet — the original X announcement — was what people were dissecting. Very quickly, viewers began pointing out visual slips: strange seams in Sora’s outfit, bits that didn’t line up. The biggest oddity involved Donald Duck — fans noticed one hand depicted with four fingers, the other with five. Little inconsistencies like those set off the usual AI alarms; some fans concluded the image had been produced by a neural net.
Updated art showed up in some digital storefronts soon after, with the finger/glitch fixed. Rather than calming things, the edit fanned more conversation, and Square Enix pushed back on the AI theory.
We are aware of the feedback regarding the recent Kingdom Hearts images. These materials were created by our development team without the use of generative AI, and the issues that occurred were the result of human error. Quality is very important to us, so we updated the images where necessary. Square Enix