'My First Seance' toy Ouija board isn't real. Image was created with AI | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Image shows 'My First Seance' toy Ouija board

An April 26 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be a children's toy – a colorful Ouija board called “My First Seance.”

“Don't Dare Bring this tool of Satan into your home! This is Definitely Not For Children!” reads part of the post’s caption.

The post was shared more than 200 times in five days. Similar versions accumulated hundreds of additional shares and received hundreds of likes.

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Our rating: Altered

The image was generated with artificial intelligence, according to two computer science experts and an AI-detection tool. It originated in a Facebook group where users share artificially generated art.

Image originated in Facebook group for AI-generated art

The Facebook post taps into long-held concerns from some religious leaders that the Ouija board is a dangerous and “demonic" device. It's marketed as a board game for children 8 and older, yet purported by some to be a tool for communicating with the dead.

But the image in the post isn’t real. It was first posted April 22 to a Facebook group where users share AI-generated art. The “about” section of the "Cursed AI" group’s page makes clear that images posted there are fabrications and describes the forum as an “eerie world of AI-generated cursed art” that includes “disturbingly beautiful images crafted by AI.”

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Hive Moderation’s AI-detection tool determined the image is 99.9% likely to be AI-generated.

“It is indeed a synthetic image from a generative AI algorithm,” Walter Scheirer, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told USA TODAY in an email.

A closer look at the details also reveals it to be a fabrication.

On the board's alphabet, some letters (J, U, V and X) are duplicated while others (S, W, Y) are omitted. The letter Z is misshapen.

The word “board” on the toy is misspelled “bond,” while the word “playset” near the bottom of the box is shown with two Es and a space between them. The text along the bottom of the box’s face is gibberish, as is the text below the word “Ouija.”

“The majority of the text is messed up, and the focus is inconsistent throughout the image,” Amarda Shehu, the associate dean for AI innovation at George Mason University, said in an email.

While the logo of the toy company is blurred out of the version in the Facebook post, the original bears what appears to be the Fisher-Price logo. However, in that version, the company logo is missing the hyphen.

It also gets the manufacturer's name wrong: The name “Ouija” is a trademark of rival toymaker Hasbro.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

Snopes also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'My First Seance' isn't a real toy. Image is AI-generated | Fact check