ChatGPT can turn your pet into a human, and it's freaking me out - here's how to try it

Every week, there's a new AI trend, but this viral ChatGPT image-generation prompt might be a step too far - turning our beloved pets into humans.

As a dog dad who treats my French Bulldog, Kermit, like an absolute prince, the idea of seeing him as a human made me feel uneasy. My focus at work, however, is creating good content, and if that means I need to see my dog as a human, then I'll suck it up and take one for the team.

If you want to cut to the chase, here's the prompt: "Can you create an image of this dog/cat as a human?" You'll need to upload an image of your pet, and ChatGPT may ask follow-up questions to get a better idea for the image generation.

Once you've uploaded your image and asked your prompt, it's time to wait for the result...

I don't want to see this

I uploaded a photo of Kermit to ChatGPT, and after a considerable wait (please make the image generation quicker, OpenAI), I got to see my furry friend as a human. I wasn't quite prepared to see a grown man sitting on the yellow armchair Kermit likes to frequent, and I immediately felt a sense of uncanny valley.

Sat on Kermit's throne was what appeared to be a happy-go-lucky man in his early 20s, wearing a yellow t-shirt with a frog on it. Kermit is three years old, which would line up with the age of ChatGPT's image, but apart from that, I'm not really convinced AI has captured him in human form.

Just to see what another dog would look like, I asked TechRadar's Editor-In-Chief, Marc Mclaren, to do the same for his black Labrador, Rigby. Weirdly, Rigby as a human looks fairly similar to Kermit, despite being a completely different breed. Marc's response to the ChatGPT image was, "Pretty spot on to be honest. The son I never had."

You know, the more I think about the concept of seeing your pet as a human, the more it makes me feel uneasy. Last year, I got to see Shazam's AI-powered collar in action, and while I'm now convinced that product might be vaporware, I left the impressive demo questioning what it means to be a pet owner.

You see, you get a connection with your dog that's completely different from any human relationship you have in your life. A dog is your best friend; it revolves its whole life around your existence, and it understands despite the inability to verbally communicate.

Shazam's idea of adding a voice to man's best friend completely overlooks the emotional connection you have with your animal, instead introducing technology to attempt to vocalize feelings.

Now, why am I talking about an AI voice collar? Well, I feel like even the concept of imagining a dog as a human overlooks what a dog is in the first place. I get this is just a fun trend, but I have a feeling I'll struggle to look at Kermit in the same way for the next few days, as he sleeps on my lap, sleeps in my bed, and cries for food at dinner time.

What about a human as a dog?

After feeling a bit revolted by the human version of my little pup, I decided to creep myself out some more by asking ChatGPT to turn a photo of me into a dog.

You can do the same by asking, "Can you create an image of this human as a dog?" Again, ChatGPT may ask for extra context to determine the breed, etc.

At first, ChatGPT took a while to determine what a bald man with a beard would look like in dog form. It took so long, in fact, that the image generation tool completely failed altogether.

I tried again, and after a considerable amount of time, ChatGPT showed me an image of what appeared to be a Labrador or a Golden Retriever with a human beard. I looked at the image, shrieked, and decided that was enough ChatGPT image generation for the day.

I think imagining an animal as a human or vice versa might be my least favorite ChatGPT trend yet, although I fully expect to see another even creepier trend appear on social media by the end of the week.

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