Over the weekend, Sam Altman posted a single emoji on X without any context or explanation. It was a wrapped gift emoji and within hours, people discovered that OpenAI had slipped a small holiday Easter egg into ChatGPT that turns your selfie into a personalised Christmas message from Santa.
SurveyLike last year, there’s no banner announcement, no toggle buried in settings, no tutorial pop-up. So, if you want to try out ChatGPT’s Christmas Easter egg, here’s exactly how it works.
Step 1: Open ChatGPT and send an emoji
Start a fresh chat in ChatGPT. Just send the “🎁” emoji. That’s it.
In most cases, ChatGPT will immediately respond by asking you to upload a selfie or take one using your camera. Some users have reported the same behaviour with festive emojis like 🎅 or 🎄, but 🎁 seems to be the most consistent trigger.
If nothing happens, it’s likely the feature hasn’t reached your account yet. This rollout appears to be gradual and server-side.
Step 2: Upload a selfie and wait
Once you upload your photo, ChatGPT takes over. Behind the scenes, ChatGPT hands your image off to Sora, OpenAI’s video generation system. The process typically takes around five minutes, sometimes a bit longer if servers are busy.
Step 3: Watch Santa judge your year
When the video is ready, ChatGPT plays a short, fully AI-generated Christmas clip starring Santa Claus. Santa addresses you directly, comments on your year, and hands out a “gift” based on your past interactions.
The tone varies. Some people get heartfelt praise and surprisingly thoughtful gifts. Others get playful mockery and deliberately awful presents. The system appears to draw lightly from your past interactions with ChatGPT, though OpenAI hasn’t explained exactly how personalisation is decided.
What makes this work is that you don’t know which version you’ll get.
Step 4: Know the limits before you try again
Right now, this appears to be a one-shot experience. If you start a new chat and send 🎁 again, ChatGPT usually just replays the same video. There’s currently no official way to regenerate a new one, tweak the outcome or request a different Santa mood.
On the surface, this is just seasonal fun. A novelty you’ll watch once, smile at and share on social media.
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Siddharth Chauhan
Siddharth reports on gadgets, technology and you will occasionally find him testing the latest smartphones at Digit. However, his love affair with tech and futurism extends way beyond, at the intersection of technology and culture. View Full Profile
