Following its bewitching of the internet with Ghibli-esque dream art, image tool of ChatGPT is now driving a new and utterly fantastical trend: pet-to-human conversions. This bizarre, AI-led trend is taking social media by storm, appealing to pet parents who are desperate to reimagine their pets with human personalities and features.
ChatGPT’s native image generator is being used by users to upload pictures of pets and ask for realistic portraits of what they would look like if they were human. The feature, which is accessible to all within the chat interface, can be used to create custom, personality-based human representations of dogs, cats, and others.
“‘Want to see what your pets would look like if they were a person? Making images in Chat is free and available to everyone. Just upload a photo and ask: Show me what my pet would look like as a human,” ChatGPT posted to Instagram.”
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The post further encouraged creativity, stating, “Pro Tip: Feel free to add attributes you’d like to see or personality traits about your pet to get a really good one!” The trend was accompanied by screenshots of X (formerly Twitter) posts, where users shared the delightful—and often hilarious—results of their pet-to-human transformations.
Creative Prompts Ignite Fantasy
In aid of making customers plunge into the trend, ChatGPT additionally posted five entertainment prompts:
- “Can you describe what my dog would look like as a human based on this photo and generate an image?”
- “If my pet were human, what would they wear? Generate an image.”
- “Based on this picture, describe my pet as a human character in a movie and generate an image.”
- “Describe my pet as a human influencer and generate an image?”
- “Describe my pet as a person in today’s world and generate an image.”
These challenges have encouraged users to look past mere images and bring personality, narrative, and imagination to their pet representations.
Mixed Reactions Online
While some users were in awe and laughing, others viewed the trend warily. Some of the AI-created images were so realistic that they created controversy regarding data usage and ethics.
One user teased, ““I’ll translate this for you: Upload your image and give Open AI fresh training data so they don’t suffer model collapse and become even less profitable.” Another user was excited, stating, “This looks so much fun! I can’t wait to see my pup as a human!”
As with most viral AI phenomena, the pet-to-human conversion has sparked curiosity and criticism—yet for the moment, it’s the internet’s new fixation.
