AI Art Craze Reddit Usernames Visualized by ChatGPT
The Latest AI Art Craze on Reddit
A new viral trend is sweeping across Reddit, where users are prompting ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot, to generate images based on their unique usernames. The prompt is simple: "make me an image based on my Reddit name." As one might expect given the often eccentric nature of Reddit usernames, the resulting AI-generated images are captivating the /chatgpt subreddit this week, showcasing a wide spectrum of creativity and absurdity.
ChatGPT, turn my username into an image. (AI-generated image) Credit: Reddit / beachedwhitemale / (AI-generated image)
From Wholesome to Wild The Spectrum of AI Creations
The outcomes of this experiment vary dramatically. For instance, a user named goodnaturedheathen received a charming and cute depiction. In stark contrast, the user BeachedWhiteMale (whose result is pictured above) got an image that is quite literal, if not entirely predictable.
While some of the more risqué or unsettling usernames like Sad_Proctologist, diarrhea_fingerpaint, or toaster_bath_therapy have had their visual interpretations (thankfully) omitted from widespread sharing (with user DiarrheaCreamPi humorously stating, “Hey gang, Imma sit this one out”), many others have produced delightful and SFW (safe for work) content. Submissions from users such as HeyLookAHorse, Br0barian, chonkybug, and ChimpanzeeClownCar offer a more wholesome and amusing look at the AI's capabilities.
Even the author of the original piece tried this ChatGPT trend, though they opted to keep their Reddit username a secret. The result was the following image:
AI-generated image. Credit: ChatGPT / Timothy Beck Werth
Try It Yourself But Beware Your Username Choice
If you're curious to see more or want to try it yourself, you can explore the official /chatgpt subreddit for a plethora of examples. Of course, you can also directly use ChatGPT to generate an image from your own username.
The quality and nature of the generated image will heavily depend on how interesting or interpretable your username is. It's worth remembering a peculiar quirk of Reddit: users are famously unable to change their usernames, not even to adjust capitalization. So, if you picked an unfortunate or dull username years ago, you are, for better or worse, stuck with it when it comes to this trend.
A History of Viral ChatGPT Image Trends
This isn't the first time ChatGPT's image generation capabilities have sparked a viral phenomenon. Previously, Mashable has covered other popular trends, such as users transforming their pets into human-like figures, generating AI action figures of themselves or others, or prompting ChatGPT to replicate an image 100 times with slight variations. Some other viral image trends stemming from ChatGPT and OpenAI have been more controversial, including the initial Studio Ghibli-style image frenzy that took the internet by storm.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
UPDATE: May. 16, 2025, 11:53 a.m. EDT We've updated this article with additional examples from Reddit's /chatgpt subreddit.
