Hands are notoriously hard to draw/create realistically. This is why so many animated characters only have 3 fingers instead of 4.

There are plenty of models and workflows now for getting the hands right now and there has been for a few months.

Perhaps this submission was prior to that, or using an older model.

Hands are really weird if you look at them closely

maybe it is because I spent a lot of time with AI generated imagery but I would figure notice that this is an AI image right away - even ignoring the hands (the days of us being able to do this by eye is numbered though). Surprised that the jurors in a prestigious photography contest did not figure it out or even suspected.

I'd assume that there are many people in the art world who have never seriously looked at AI generated imagery - especially the part of community which is more prestigious, more experienced, older and more traditional, i.e. those most likely to be jurors in contests.