A researcher joked that working at OpenAI ages you. Now colleagues are posting their before-and-after photos.

Thibault Sottiaux's X post sparked a mini trend of OpenAI colleagues sharing their own before-and-after photos.

Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images An OpenAI Codex lead joked that the lab's pace can make workers feel years older in days.

After the post went viral, his Codex colleagues began sharing their own before-and-after photos.

The joke comes as AI leaders describe the health toll of the industry's breakneck pace.

Working at OpenAI may look good for your résumé.

For your under-eyes? The company's researchers are not so sure.

A tongue-in-cheek joke by Thibault Sottiaux, the engineering lead on OpenAI's Codex, about the AI lab's breakneck pace has sparked a mini before-and-after trend among colleagues — complete with changed hairstyles and a recommendation for eye patches.

"A few weeks at OpenAI feel like years at other companies in terms of how much gets done," Sottiaux wrote in an X post on Thursday.

"Crazy how much you can age in a few days." The post, which has been viewed more than 950,000 times as of Friday morning, followed several days of online jokes about Sottiaux's appearance in an episode of the "Matthew Berman" podcast on Monday.

X users compared the interview footage with his LinkedIn profile photo.

One joked that OpenAI had replaced him with "TIBO-3000" — a fictional robot version of Sottiaux — while others teased that he had not slept in months.

I had to check @thsottiaux twice.

This is not the same guy.

What did OpenAI do to you? https://t.co/w6sB8xedOv pic.twitter.com/EAD0ZfgvEt — Ziwen (@ziwenxu_) August 25, 2026 Sottiaux did not exactly shut down the meme.