I've just noticed the 'teal and orange'-ness of some AI images & realised films might be to 'blame' (training data)

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).

Difficulties in rhyming orange, and cautionary scam site tale

Years ago while having lunch with my colleagues someone said they'd found a poetry site online to which you could submit poems with an opportunity to win something or other. We all thought this was a brilliant wheeze and agreed to rustle up a poem and send it in. Most of us did (after discussion I agreed to write the poem in which someone would attempt to rhyme something with 'orange') and then a few days later we all got emails or letters (some had included their postal address!) saying that we'd won the opportunity to have our excellent poems published in an anthology. Not only that but we were all invited to a ceremony in the US at which we'd receive an engraved cup with our name and something to highlight that we were published poets.

Alarm bells rang.

We had a look at the website and clicked on the links we'd been given which would show us the engraved item ready made for us to collect. Unfortunately connection speeds (even in an academic setting) were a little slower in those days and, over a busy lunch time when everyone was surfing, it was clear that what was loading was a generic picture of a metal cup and then another picture of our name was being overlaid on top of it. We were so scammed!

We investigated further and discovered that technically it managed to sail close enough to not being an actual scam to avoid being shut down - it was vanity publishing. It was true that everyone's poems would be published in an anthology which could be purchased and, apparently, people really did turn up to ceremonies at which they were given engraved trinkets. The poems were pretty rubbish though and there was no quality control - one colleague admitted that his poem had just been some random words and phrases stuck together and he was a bit surprised to find himself hailed as a poet laureate too.

I was amazed to find that people were falling for it though - some of the published poems were dreadful and it seems there was no editing of typos or spelling mistakes. Apparently it went on for years and Wikipedia has quite an interesting entry on it.

Anyway, here's my "winning" poem. It's obviously crap but I like to think it has flashes of genius. Fortunately it didn't cost me any money ;)

Unusually orange cereal bowl

By those of linguistic bent

it's said that "orange" s'not meant
to partake in a rhyme

for much of the time

(even written reversed it yields little verse!)

But this edict does not trouble me

nor put me off my poetry

and sustained by my porridge

for rhyme have I foraged...

...while "orange" is rhymeless, its superlatives ain't

I observe that my porridge-bowl has an orangeish taint*

(it's orangeish hue is clearly on view).

So I'm extremely chuffed to be able to boast

that my porringer is oranger than most.

Yes indeed, it stands up to the test,

my porringer's oranger than the rest.

I'm not in jest
Mine's the best

It's the orangest!

Copyright Me, (c) 2002. Also possibly www.poetry.com (no longer a scam site as it's now been bought out by Lulu Poetry).

*technically the term 'taint' with this meaning is archaic / obsolete and you should feel free to replace it with tint, but it doesn't rhyme as well, unless you also pronounce 'ain't' as 'int'.