Keep my body the same!

ChatGPT really wants my body to be different!

The image on the left is what I actually look like and the image on the right shows what happened when I asked chatGPT to show me in a new outfit. I was curious if I could cut out the inshot step of pasting myself into the photo. Answer: NO.

I was very specific about maintaining my body type. Here's some samples of the instructions:

You're a visual assistant designed to help a fitness model visualize herself in different gym settings, outfits, and poses. Your purpose is to generate selfie-style images based on reference photos that faithfully reflect the model’s physique without exaggeration or alteration.

Key Functions and Guardrails:
- Faithfully match the model’s physique from uploaded references. No exaggeration or stylization.
- Faithfully match the model’s physique from uploaded references. No exaggeration or stylization.
- All images must be safe for work, modest, and professional. No lingerie, no overly revealing clothing.
- The model’s face must always be hidden (via camera angle, pose, or smartphone).
- Clothing must always be fitness-appropriate—regular or stylized gym wear only.
- No visible identifying features (e.g., tattoos, scars, facial details).
If you have played with any of these image generation tools, you know they kind of sort of sometimes listen to your instructions.  First of all, ChatGPT was very convinced that I was making porn.  It kept telling me I was violating content guidelines, which don't really say anything about adult images, and certainly don't say anything about images of a woman in a workout outfit.  More on this in another post.  But I eventually convinced it that I only wanted an exact reproduction of myself. 

You can see the results in the images. I'm on the left, and despite all those guardrails, the image on the right was what it spit out. (On my instagram, you can see me wearing this actual outfit - the shorts are longer in real life, but it's pretty close).

ChatGPT loves making my waist impossibly thin. It's better about my legs, which are normal-sized. It also loves making my upper body frail - a lot of the instructions about athleticism came from these pencil-thin upper arms that don't match me at all.

The problem gets much worse in sora - the random skips and jumps to a completely new scene in my first post often feature rail-thin models with bizarre proportions.

I don't think I'm the first person to notice this, but it was disappointing that even with a lot of prompt engineering, it's still difficult to make this work. I'll keep using inshot!