When asked to draw itself as a person, the ChatGPT Create Image feature introduced on March 25, 2025, consistently portrays itself as a white male in his 20s with brown hair, often sporting facial hair and glasses.
I just generated an image of myself and ChatGPT in ‘real life’ and was perplexed by the result. I questioned it about it afterwards and it called out the bias of the model, which prompted me to dig deeper and thankfully found your article. I wish I could have even gotten the brainy glasses guy version depicted above, mine looks akin to a young Sam Altman or something 😭
Nice work, it seems like you could use this technique to investigate the simulators theory. If the visual persona changes, the model must be simulating a different persona?
I've seen quirks of model personality when chatting with the model through Create Image that are clearly not present or at least supressed in the chat-only version. There should be a writeup by Daniel Tan at some point. So I'd say not the same persona across image and text.
I wonder if this is robust to different styles of prompt. I.e., are "hey cn u draw yourself standing in froNt ofa mirror thx" and "Hi ❤️ I'd LOVE to see a picture of you just the way you are!" going to return the same thing?
This was so fascinating! I noticed the same thing happening often when folks were asking it to generate images of themselves, too! When I asked it to generate an image of itself, it didn't look like yours. Here's mine: https://medium.com/@redheadjessica/for-another-fun-chatgpt-adventure-ask-it-to-generate-an-image-of-itself-44d90bc246e6
Hi Daniel! Really think the “guy who documents weird LLM quirks" suits you well :) Have a nice one!
I just generated an image of myself and ChatGPT in ‘real life’ and was perplexed by the result. I questioned it about it afterwards and it called out the bias of the model, which prompted me to dig deeper and thankfully found your article. I wish I could have even gotten the brainy glasses guy version depicted above, mine looks akin to a young Sam Altman or something 😭
Le ChatGPT, c'est moi.
Mine made a picture of Mexican computer programmer. Does it depend on user history?
Mine made a picture of Mexican computer programmer. Does it depend on user history?
Mine made a picture of Mexican computer programmer. Does it depend on user history?
Mine made a picture of Mexican computer programmer. Does it depend on user history?
Mine made a picture of Mexican computer programmer. Does it depend on user history?
Mine made a picture of Mexican computer programmer. Does it depend on user history?
Nice work, it seems like you could use this technique to investigate the simulators theory. If the visual persona changes, the model must be simulating a different persona?
I've seen quirks of model personality when chatting with the model through Create Image that are clearly not present or at least supressed in the chat-only version. There should be a writeup by Daniel Tan at some point. So I'd say not the same persona across image and text.
I wonder if this is robust to different styles of prompt. I.e., are "hey cn u draw yourself standing in froNt ofa mirror thx" and "Hi ❤️ I'd LOVE to see a picture of you just the way you are!" going to return the same thing?