‘Horrifying’ — Reddit users are creating uncanny valley photos with ChatGPT, so I asked it to make something creepy and now I deeply regret it

People have been using AI tools to create horrifying images, bring their nightmares to life and visualize spooky stories since the early days of AI image generators .

But when I was browsing Reddit over the weekend, I saw several threads about something slightly different.

People were asking ChatGPT to create creepy, unsettling and uncanny valley images, without giving much direction beyond that.

One thread simple asked ChatGPT to create an image that gave off uncanny valley , while another user told it to make the most creepy and unsettling image it could.

The photos that the original posters shared were already very creepy, but it was the replies that really hooked me.

People began trying similar prompts themselves and sharing the results.

I was fascinated by all of the different (and yet in some ways surprisingly similar) ways ChatGPT interpreted what it means for an image to feel uncanny, creepy and wrong.

So, as you might expect, I tried it myself.

The result is the image you see at the top of this post, and I wish I hadn't stared at it for so long.

ChatGPT called this one "The Smile in the Silent Hallway". (Image credit: OpenAI) Does ChatGPT really understand the uncanny? The uncanny valley describes the strange dip in our emotional response to something as it becomes more and more human-like and familiar to us.

It's a term that's often used in robotics, so if a robot obviously looks like a robot, it might not bother us at all.

But something that one that looks almost human but not quite can become deeply unsettling.

More broadly, the uncanny is often about something that's seemingly familiar while also feeling strange or wrong somehow.

That's when your brain starts to tell you something isn't quite right.