I think the photo may have been AI upscaled by someone - that may account for the arm rest oddity. This is annoying as its the only version of the photo I can find.

I suspect someone photoshopped (and possibly even colorised) a version of this photo, as you can see the reflection of Leonard Nimoy's legs still present:

That looks the most likely scenario - now I have to find a scanned copy of the original.

Great detective work you guys. Worthy of Bruce Wayne!

btw the colors of that doctored photo bothered me when I saw it. Something felt off. Its fun to see I was right.

Yup, my first thought was that it was simply a discolored photo from an early 70s/80s camera, but the more I looked the more parts of it looked like the same kind of discoloration you get from old B&W film that's been colored using Ai

yeah, I felt it was discolored, but the idea that there was AI never hit me. I guess from now on, we have to accept AI may be involved in any photo or video. Scary thought. What IS real now?

when I upscaled my TAS animation to 5k, I used AI to upscale my paintings of planets. If I would have enlarged in photoshop, it would be blurry and crappy. But AI added tiny details all over that was perfect brush strokes, things I never did. 😱

The more this "tool" gets pushed into literally every corner of working life, the more actual workers' skills will be devalued - and accordingly paid less by the greedy corporate execs who think they themselves are safe from ever being replaced. 😐

(or maybe even both 😄)