You might have seen people sharing caricatures of themselves on X, Reddit, or Instagram. Well, it’s part of a new viral trend, where people upload their photo and ask ChatGPT to turn it into a caricature. But it’s not just any caricature; they explicitly ask the AI to use everything it knows about them based on previous chats to make it more personal, more accurate, and more “them.”
Soon, ChatGPT churns out a comical cartoonish image of you with exaggerated features and all. It is packed with your personality traits, interests, hobbies, job, and even your relationship drama, too. Maybe something else that you mentioned in passing, like 6 months ago. And that is the most unsettling part about this trend.
Your AI Knows Too Much About You
While the caricature trend is just another harmless thing, like many others that we have seen in the past year. Remember the Studio Ghibli trend, or other viral image trends like creating a 3D model of yourself or the saree trend, which had women sharing their photos in traditional Indian attire.
But what’s especially problematic with this viral phenomenon is the fact that it exposes how much the AI knows about you. To make the output “better” and more “personalized”, ChatGPT references all the other chats you have had with it in the past. These chats could contain discussions about personal habits, emotional vulnerabilities, career struggles, inside jokes, and relationship details.
Even some confidential documents that are not meant to be disclosed elsewhere. Like in a recent revelation, where it was found out that Trump’s acting cyber chief shared official documents with AI. It is worth noting that OpenAI retains this information to train its models, and poses a serious privacy risk.
The Possible Misuse of Your Identity
It’s not just about your information. This viral trend also requires you to share your photo, so that the AI can make a caricature in your likeness. This puts into focus that when you share your photo with ChatGPT, it learns about your facial geometry, skin color, texture, body type, ethnicity, and more.
Now, the company might not use it inherently for a malicious purpose. But there is always a risk of a data breach, which could put your details in the wrong hands. There was a recent incident from last year, where Discord’s third-party vendor suffered a breach, which led to over 70,000 government IDs being leaked.
Even if the company has its privacy policies in place, there is still the fact that we are feeding into AI. The more we share, the more it knows, the more it learns, the more it gets better at mimicking us. So, suffice it to say that this trend is not healthy, especially from a privacy point of view.
At The End of the Day, It’s Just AI Slop!
Now, even if you don’t care about your privacy, there’s another layer of issues underlying this trend that no one is discussing. Caricature used to be a fun and very creative form of artwork. It would be up to the artist’s interpretation to decide which features to highlight. The drawn image had an effort that made people laugh.
On the other hand, caricatures made by ChatGPT just feel more like AI slop. From what I have seen online, and the one that I created myself looks pretty much the same. There doesn’t seem to be a shred of creativity in sight. It’s more of an algorithmic exaggeration based on patterns it has learned from millions of existing styles.
Honestly, that takes away the WOW factor of a caricature. The same was the case with the Studio Ghibli trend. Ripping off a style of hand-drawn art for a mundane, by-the-numbers effect with nothing distinct to speak of. Many people voiced their against the trend, but their voices were unheard in the virality of it all.
Again, I don’t mind this viral caricature trend. But are you really comfortable with AI knowing so much about you?
Rishabh Sabarwal
