Last month, Square Enix revealed a new Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III]Â that would, among other things, finally bring the existing trilogy to Nintendo fans via the Switch 2. But the North American box art released for the game immediately caused a stir when people noticed the wrong number of fingers on Donald Duck’s hand. A small controversy arose over whether genAI was involved, and Square Enix has finally responded to try to clear the air.
Unlike the original Tetsuya Nomura art, which showed the game’s characters together near the center of the composition, the new box art had them separated. Some speculated that some sort of AI tool had been used to try to fill in the spaces created by this change with new details. One such detail was Donald Duck’s previously obscured left hand, which seemed to have the wrong number of fingers.
Hey so why does donald duck have different numbers of fingers on each hand pic.twitter.com/WGuHxBwZdY
— RJ Palmer@Gen Con AS-90 (@arvalis) June 9, 2026
Square Enix has now suggested that this wasn’t due to AI being used, though without going into much detail about what actually did happen. “We’re aware of feedback regarding recent Kingdom Hearts visuals,” a Square Enix PR rep told GameSpot. “These assets were created by our development team without the use of generative AI, and the issues resulted from human error.”
The old art with five-fingered Donald has since been replaced in Square Enix’s promotional materials ahead of the game’s release on October 8, though the original X post that kicked off the firestorm is still up. “Quality is extremely important to us, and updated assets have been implemented where appropriate,” the PR person said. Elsewhere, the company has been very bullish on the prospects of genAI helping to improve efficiencies.
