In a surprise holiday move, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has teased a new Easter Egg hidden within the ChatGPT mobile app that allows users to transform a simple selfie into a personalised video message from Santa Claus. The feature, released just days before Christmas, leverages OpenAI’s latest multimodal capabilities, combining advanced image recognition with the platform’s viral Advanced Voice Mode to create a highly realistic and, often humorous, holiday experience.
The Christmas Easter Egg, which was shared by a cryptic message by Sam Altman on X (formerly Twitter), seems to be OpenAI’s trial of a viral ‘Nano Banana-like trend’, hoping to make a lot of people try out the advanced multimodal capabilities of the latest GPT-5.2 and the Sora AI video generator.
How the ‘Santa Selfie’ feature works
The feature is not immediately visible as a button, staying true to its ‘Easter Egg’ nature. According to user reports and Altman’s social media teasers, here is how users can trigger the holiday magic:
– Ensure you are running the latest version of the ChatGPT app on iOS or Android.
– From the emojis collection, insert the ‘gift’ emoji in the chat box.
– Once the emoji is sent, the ChatGPT interface asks you to take a selfie or choose from one in the gallery.
– Using the image-to-video generation feature, the app generates a short, personalised video where Santa comments on the user’s surroundings, their holiday outfit, or even the good deeds they’ve done this year.
The feature is currently rolling out to both Free and Plus users, though Plus subscribers may have higher usage limits for the Santa interactions.
ChatGPT Santa Selfie: Is it an answer to Gemini Nano Banana?
The ChatGPT Santa Selfie seems to be an answer to Google’s Gemini 3 Nano Banana trend. The official account of Nano Banana Pro on X (formerly Twitter) has been sharing viral prompts to celebrate the festive spirit of Christmas, ranging from cute ‘Chibi-style’ 3D dioramas to Christmas greeting cards. Google, however, is encouraging its users to generate custom images instead of videos.
The Santa Selfie trend comes after Sam Altman’s recent declaration of a ‘Code Red’ at OpenAI, which represents the company’s highest level of internal emergency, signaling an existential threat to its market dominance. Triggered primarily by the launch of Google’s Gemini 3—which surpassed ChatGPT on several key performance benchmarks—the directive has forced a dramatic change in strategy. Under this mandate, Altman has ordered an eight-week pause on secondary projects, including the Sora video generator and planned advertising integrations, and reallocated all engineering and computing resources toward the core ChatGPT product.
