I thought the same thing and the AI looked like Eric Idol. It is really sad seeing a magazine like the Smithsonian using AI slop.

Researchers used A.I. and photo editing tools to create this digital reconstruction of the older victim's escape.

What has the world come to.

Laziness, really.

Yeah I wouldn't mind if an actual artist has uses some slop generator to help them in some aspect of doing the depiction, but this was clearly just some prompt into a chatbot and no actual artist even touched it. Don't think they even used "photo editing tools" except perhaps for cropping.

Like you say, no lamp. One item. And such a nice clear day you can see all the way to the mountain in the described "darker than dark"-darkness — for which he was supposed to have the lamp for.

He's tall

So did he survive?

Half of the article was spent justifying their use of AI for this purpose.