Oh, this is funny... I didn't find the Getty Images version of the picture that Ars used of a keyboard with some weird layout that has two O's on it, but I found a similar one on iStockPhoto that was uploaded in 2016.

https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/08/get-in-on-the-ars-community-that-doesnt-fit-beneath-an-article/

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/register-button-on-computer-keyboard-gm518733132-90202573

So the good news is it's not actually AI slop. The bad news is that someone made a slop photo by hand and uploaded it 10 years ago, and no one noticed. Including the artist credited with putting the Ars Subscribe logo on the key.

Either that or there's a now-fogrotten keyboard layout out there that has GU instead off [] and an extra OC instead of <>