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My friend hopped on the Studio Ghibli bandwagon last week, changing his WhatsApp profile picture to his anime likeness. I guess he wants his contacts to think that he’s being creative, but I’m convinced it’s because it’s a more flattering depiction of him. Still, I’ve been as impressed as everyone else with this latest ChatGPT evolution and wanted to see if it could turn me into a Muppet. It seemed a fun idea, and unlike my friend, no one can accuse me of using a Muppet likeness to make myself look more appealing.

I tried it out, and once I saw the results, I knew I had to share them here.

Why a Muppet?

I can’t pretend it’s my lifelong dream to be immortalized as a Muppet — I would have preferred to make a name playing in the FIFA World Cup final. That said, I love the Muppets as much as the next millennial. They were a mainstay of my childhood, and the holidays aren’t complete without an annual viewing of A Muppet’s Christmas Carol.

But I was more curious than anything. The recent viral craze of turning every photo and meme into a Studio Ghibli-style anime cartoon was triggered by Sam Altman’s announcement of the new GPT-4o-powered image generation tool. As much as I enjoyed the results, they didn’t seem to be too much of a challenge for the AI. It was creating a fairly true-to-life but simpler version of the image.

A Muppet seems to me that it would be a better test for the LLM. Not only are Muppets real (by which I mean they have a physical presence in the real world —  I’m not five years old,) but they’re also much more open to interpretation. They have exaggerated features, come in different colors, and their physical characteristics can be defined by things like their personalities or jobs. There’s definitely more scope for interpretation than an anime copy.

I gave the above picture of me holding a cute bird (I’m the one on the left before you ask) to ChatGPT Plus with the simple prompt of “Make me a Muppet.” Sure enough, the image in the center is what it spat out after some processing time, and it’s Muppet Matt.

I was impressed. I mean, I’m quite an indistinct Muppet, but then I’m a fairly indistinct guy in terms of features, so I don’t know why I would expect anything else.

You will have noticed that it doesn’t look quite right. In particular, the hand looks too human, as Muppets tend to only have four fingers on each hand. Not only does Muppet Matt have five, but he also has fingernails. Perhaps disturbed, the bird has also switched direction. Still, not bad for a first run.

I gave ChatGPT a chance to rectify this with the prompt, “Can you make the hands look more like Muppet hands?”

This was a bit of an error on my part. I shouldn’t have pluralized because only one of my hands is visible in the original image. ChatGPT took this to mean both should be visible and gave me a new pose, as shown in the image on the right above. It was closer this time, though. The bird-holding hand still has too many fingers, but they look more like Muppet fingers, and the other now-visible hand only has four.

My next question was a philosophical one. I might now have a Muppet likeness, but is that the definitive Matt Muppet? Are my characteristics such that whatever image I use, will I always be that particular character? Or, are Muppet alter egos like snowflakes, and no two creations are alike?

To find out, I repeated the request for two more images. The one above is me on a recent trip to New York, and it would let me see how ChatGPT did in making a Muppet from a selfie. The one below is me driving, with the AI required to produce a Muppet in profile and with hands in use.

It’s certainly consistent. Muppet Matt’s features don’t seem to change much, which includes the human-esque fingers. A hint of a smile was detected in the original NYC picture, leading to a broad smile on my puppet counterpart, but the driving focus was carried over to the Muppet in the below example. If you look closely, you might also observe that Muppet Matt drives a lot slower than I do.

What if ChatGPT knew more about me?

In keeping with Jim Henson’s vision, I wondered if ChatGPT would adjust my Muppet to reflect aspects of my character. When you think of classic Muppets like Oscar the Grouch or Animal, you start to get a feel for their personality just by looking at them. I was curious if ChatGPT would attempt to reflect anything about me in my features or attire.

To do this, I fed the AI an image of me in front of a blank background. I first asked it to make me into a Muppet in the same way as the previous requests, and the center image below came out as expected. I then gave it the prompt, “How might you adjust the image if the Muppet was a British writer with a happy demeanor?”

ChatGPT didn’t take the bait. I wondered if it might adjust my puppet with some stereotypes, such as a Union Jack shirt for a Brit or some glasses to signify a writer. Instead, the right image shows it stayed true to Muppet Matt’s features but reflected his happy demeanor with a big grin.

I could explore these puppetish possibilities all day, but it’s a bit of a time-sink. Besides, I might better spend my time projecting myself into other childhood TV favorites. I bet I’d look pretty cool as a Transformer or a Ninja Turtle.

Have you been as impressed as I have with the new GPT-4o image generator? Drop a vote in the poll below, and feel free to let us know about your own experience in the comments.