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.
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.
Which makes asking AI to create something uncanny interesting and sort of ironic. Because often without meaning to AI can conjure an uncanny valley effect. Especially back when it used to generate more bizarre physics, odd expressions and many nonsensical hands.
But also because we're essentially asking a machine to interpret a very human feeling of unease and translate it back to us into an image designed to provoke that feeling in us.
What I found really interesting was that, at least judging by the images I saw on Reddit, ChatGPT has some surprisingly consistent ideas about how to do that.
Many of the images looked relatively normal at first glance. Most had a similar theme to mine, they resembled snapshots documenting family meals, gatherings and birthday parties. But the longer I looked, the worse they became.
Hands were turned into claw-like fingers, smiles didn't match people's eyes and there were odd reflections and repeating patterns. Many of the rooms also had dark recesses, so you couldn't see what might be lurking back there.
“The reflection in the TV is terrifying,” said a Reddit user about one of the images. "Not what I wanted to see while randomly waking up at 2am to scroll through my Reddit notifications. Horrifying," another wrote.
My image had the same quality. There was nothing obviously horrifying in it, but it felt like the subjects were looking right at me. Their faces looked normal at first, but they didn't have eyebrows. And the room was familiar but gloomy and difficult to make out.
The horror in the familiar
When we think of AI-generated horror, I think it's easy to imagine monsters and gore. I've certainly seen a lot of that content online. But ChatGPT really did achieve a realistic level of "uncanny" that went in the opposite direction.
One Reddit user summed this up perfectly: "This is more effective than a lot of direct horror prompts because it stays close to normal."
All of the photos also look old. They have washed out colors and bad lighting in the same style of photos from the 80s and 90s. Another user commented that ChatGPT "nails the 90's aesthetic, but exaggerates just enough to be really creepy."
For me, that aesthetic adds another layer of unease because it feels like these images have been found rather than generated. Like seeing someone get out an old photo album in a spooky movie and then you see there was a ghost in the window the whole time.
It's no surprise I got so fascinated by ChatGPT's take on the uncanny. I've always loved stories that deal with the horror in the ordinary, like David Lynch's Twin Peaks and, more recently, the movie Backrooms. Judging from the reception to these fairly simple prompts on Reddit, I'm not alone.
If you're going to make some for yourself, just don't spend too long looking at them. You'll convince yourself the people in them really are staring back.
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