A photo editing mistake from Ariana Grande's recent Vogue Japan cover briefly stole the spotlight this week after fans noticed the singer appeared to have six fingers on her left hand.
The Wicked star posed for the Jan. 26, 2026, cover story only for her moment to be outshined by an apparent Photoshop fail, but she took it in stride in the comments.
Six-finger Grande announces new album
The mistake went largely unnoticed until an avid Grande fan pointed it out in a Thursday Instagram post, asking “Who’s responsible for giving ariana 6 fingers.”
Posing in a floral dress and lace gloves, the singer and actress’s raised right hand sports a conspicuous extra pinky behind the front one.
Grande herself commented hours later with a joke, writing, “oh my goodness how exciting,” because she had “been saying i need some extra appendages so that i can start an album!”
Vogue Japan has already replaced the messed-up photo with one displaying the correct number of digits.
While some folks took her promise of a new album a little too seriously, Grande continued to joke around in the comments. When one user asked if she could "pinky promise us" new music, the "Bang Bang" singer asked, "with which one."
To be clear, Grande is unlikely to announce a successor to Eternal Sunshine any time soon. In fact, she might be taking a rare break, if her Vogue Japan interview is any indication.
"I think that it would probably be healthy to,” she said. “I'm not used to taking breaks. But I do know that I grew so much from taking space from music while I was filming Wicked.
"But yeah, these past few years have been pretty nonstop. And by few, I mean fifteen."
She is, however, about to appear in the next season of American Horror Story.
AI slop or Photoshop mishap?
As word of the photo shoot error spread from Instagram to X, AI critics immediately blamed the new technology, which is infamous for adding extra fingers to unsuspecting hands.
"The level of AI slopification is so high that Ariana Grande has 6 fingers on the cover of Vogue Japan and NOBODY noticed it before publishing it," wrote @LuizaJarovsky, co-founder of the AI, Tech & Privacy Academy.
While AI slop is a real concern for many reasons, a flood of commenters pointed out that this was likely a simple Photoshop flub—something that existed long before the creation of the large language models we call "AI."
"This isn't AI, it's photo editing error," said @billybinion. "Not everything is an AI problem."
"Mistakes like this have been around for over a decade," digital artist @CodyAlanAllred pointed out. "This wasn't an Ai error, rather an error with blending multiple images together from different images. Fact check before posting!"
"Just cause it's sloppy doesn't mean it's AI sloppy," wrote @anthony45826012.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s newsletter here.
