An Instagram challenge that more than 310,000 people have participated in asks the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to cleverly insult users’ own posts.
The “ask ChatGPT to roast your feed in one paragraph” challenge takes place via an Instagram story template, which some users have referred to as a new form of chain mail. After users view the template on others’ Instagram stories, a button allows them to easily reshare the template or complete the challenge on their own.
In this case, the viral template requires Instagram users to download the ChatGPT app and send it screenshots of their Instagram profiles with the prompt “roast my Instagram feed in one paragraph” to get rude descriptions of their own posts.
The resulting roasts include “trying too hard to be spontaneous,” “‘generic dude at a party’ vibes,” “the LinkedIn of Instagram profiles,” “like a midlife crisis,” a “chaotic scrapbook” and “a Pinterest board that ran out of ideas.” The chatbot will comment on various pictures and pull together hyper-specific insults.
Once users get their roasts, they can click into the template and share the text along with screenshots of their Instagram profiles.
The challenge can’t be performed on desktop, only the mobile app, and it requires participants to have ChatGPT accounts.
Besides funny memes, Instagram story templates have also been used to quickly spread political messaging, like an “All Eyes on Rafah” template, which used an AI-generated image and was shared over 30 million times in May. Anyone can create an Instagram story template. The creator of the ChatGPT one is a German “bookstagram” reading fan account that didn’t respond to a request for comment.
ChatGPT was the first breakout AI-text tool that sparked a wave of investment and innovation in the generative AI space. Meta launched its generative AI tools following the popularity of ChatGPT but has struggled to get users to adopt them.
The trend is one of the first breakout instances of a cross-platform text-based AI trend.
Many other social media trends have involved AI-image filters, or images generated by AI.
