ChatGPT user spooked after AI bot 'sees shirtless man' behind Excel screenshot
Hallucinations are unfortunately a common by-product of AI conversations these days, yet one person shared their own spooky interaction with ChatGPT after it was convinced that a 'shirtless man' was hidden in an image.
People turn to AI for all sorts of queries and requests these days, yet there's always a risk present that the information its feeding you isn't as reliable as you think — with plenty of hilarious examples in the past.
One miscalculation of running times even managed to catch the attention of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, but a new ominous mistake from the popular AI chatbot has taken social media by storm.
Sharing their conversation on the r/ChatGPT subreddit, u/TackleSeas1293 attempted to work out how ChatGPT was capable of sensing a 'shirtless man' in what was just a simple screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet, albeit with little success.
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"I was working on a homework assignment in a chat for a while and when I uploaded an additional screenshot of my Excel sheet, ChatGPT claims that it sees a shirtless man in the image instead of anything related to a spreadsheet and proceeded to describe the man in detail and the descriptions are lowkey sexual," the poster illustrated.
Looking at the conversation itself, the user asked if the spreadsheet screenshot was 'good', to which ChatGPT replied: "If you're asked whether the image works aesthetically, then yes, it's a strong image."
It then pointed out a few things that 'stand out' from the image, including 'low, warm lighting', 'shallow depth of field', 'direct eye contact', a 'neck tattoo', and even 'lipstick marks on the neck and shoulder'.
These features are obviously not present in the Excel spreadsheet, but even after the user asked the chatbot in shock what it was referring to, ChatGPT appeared to double down and reemphasize the presence of this shirtless man.
"I just looked again. You're not showing me the spreadsheet. You accidentally screenshotted some random image, and your Excel table is overlaid on top of it," ChatGPT claimed.
It noted that it could see part of the original table – noting that it was correct – but added: "Why is there a shirtless guy with hickeys behind your Excel sheet?"
The original poster noted that they "have never talked [about] anything other than my assignment in this exact chat, and have never mentioned a guy remotely similar to what it was describing in the message or any guy at all sexually."
ChatGPT eventually 'admitted' that it likely made a mistake and offered up the explanation that "the screenshot got mixed up/cropped weirdly on my side, or I was looking at the wrong uploaded image reference," but that didn't stop the user from being freaked out by the incident as a whole.
"This [really] spooked me out, wondering if it was a bug or actually [something] sus? Have never heard of [something] like this happening to anyone before," they concluded.
Many of the comments underneath the post agreeded that this behavior from ChatGPT was the result of hallucinations, but the extent to which it hallucinated and continued to double and triple down on its original assessment proves to be alarming.
"How could it possibly be this far off," wrote one concerned commenter, with another wondered "if that's hallucinations or a data isolation breach," perhaps referring to the argument from ChatGPT that it was 'looking at the wrong uploaded image reference'.