ChatGPT’s latest image trend? How Redditors are turning usernames into viral arrest records — and they’re too good

It would be an understatement to say that ChatGPT’s newly acquired native image generation capabilities have become one of the most liked features by users. The image genereator to power many social media trends including that involved converting their real life pictures into Studio Ghibli like effect or even a real life action figure. However, social media users have gone a step beyond and have started using ChatGPT to create a mugshot of themselves but with a twist. 

The new trend mostly seen on Reddit uses the username of a person in order to ask ChatGPT to create an image of the user but not just a normal image, a mugshot of them explaining the reasons for which they were arrested for. 

Since then a lot of hilarious pictures generated by ChatGPT have emerged that explains the reasons for user’s arrest. For the username Nagadavadia, ChatGPT generated an image of a white man with a beard and long hair with glasses on top and lizard like creature sitting on his lead. The mugshot while revealing the reason for arrest reads, “Charged with proclaiming himself the high priest of lizardkind”

For another user Darthpug93, ChatGPT generated an image of a man in black t-shirt wearing a Darth Vader helmet with dog ears and dark makeup while holding a sign that reads, “CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTING TO USE THE FORCE ON A DOG.”

Why is ther a sudden craze for ChatGPT generated images? 

ChatGPT has had the ability to rely to DALL-E 3 to convert text prompts into images for a while. However, a few weeks ago, OpenAI unlocked the native image generation abilities of GPT-4o (language model running the chatbot) which allows it to create images without relying on an external model. 

ChatGPT can also use its knowledge of the user’s preferences, image generation knowledge and its text knowledge base to create a more nuanced and accurate depiction that more often than not matches the requirements of user. 

Earlier this week, OpenAI also rolled out its o3 and o4 mini reasoning model which have been used to reverse geoguess the location from an image.