I googled to find something about the highest helicopter flown and read this article ('How high can helicopters fly?') which includes an image that I'm certain is AI generated (Ctrl+F as explained to jump straight to it)*. It's very "teal and orange" and I was suddenly struck by how many other AI images I'd subliminally noticed that also have this colour arrangement, though I'd not really elevated the notion to conscious thought until now.
Back in 2010 my friend @jjsanderson shared on Twitter an article called 'Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness' (March 2010) which explained the reasoning behind and overuse of these colour tones in film. It introduces an interesting artificiality to film which is visually arresting, but sometimes a bit too much.
Briefly: human skin tones are in the orange spectrum (pink to brown) and colour theory puts blue as the 'opposite' so enhancing orange and blue tones brings out skin tones and shadows in contrast.
Squares of teal (left) and orange (right)
Wondered if others had noticed this appearing in AI images - yes. A year ago ;)
This color scheme shouts that your image was AI-generated
(April 2024 or March 2024 - date given as 03/04/2024)
This specifically references film as possible training data and also suggests, for those who wish to generate their own AI slop on Midjourney etc, some ways of getting round the 'teal/orange bias in AI generated images'. (It also pointed me to a TV Tropes article, Orange/Blue Contrast (date not given), which gives further examples of teal/orange use in film and television).
Here's a Reddit post asking the same question: Anyone else notice that some AI images look sort of yellow? (April 2025)
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
*Ctrl+F is a keyboard shortcut for Edit / Find on a computer. On a Mac it's Command F (press and hold the ⌘ then tap the F key).
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