Appall and scorn ripped through scientists’ social media networks Thursday as several egregiously bad AI-generated figures circulated from a peer-reviewed article recently published in a reputable journal.

But, looking closer only reveals more flaws, including the labels “dissilced,” Stemm cells," “iollotte sserotgomar,” and “dck.”

Many researchers expressed surprise and dismay that such a blatantly bad AI-generated image could pass through the peer-review system and whatever internal processing is in place at the journal.

One scientific integrity expert questioned whether it provide an overly complicated explanation of “how to make a donut with colorful sprinkles.”

The image is supposed to provide visual representations of how the signaling pathway from Figure 2 regulates the biological properties of spermatogonial stem cells.

As such, research journals have recently set new authorship guidelines for AI-generated text to try to address the problem.

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