OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed a festive Easter egg in the ChatGPT app, which would allow users to transform their selfie into a personalised Santa-themed video message. This innovative feature combines image recognition with AI-generated video, creating a fun and interactive holiday experience.
"Here is a little hint," Altman wrote on X (formerly Twitter). The cryptic post drew huge attention as it was accompanied by a gift emoji. The post was viewed nearly two million times, with social media users rushing to the comment section to ask what it was about.
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See the post here:
here is a little hint: 🎁
— Sam Altman (@sama) December 20, 2025
In the comment section, the user attempted to decode what he tried to convey. "I think I figured it out," said one user, asking others to paste the gift emoji into the ChatGPT chat.
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Here's the step to create Santa's message:
1. Open the ChatGPT mobile app and send the gift emoji
2. Upload or take a selfie when prompted.
3. ChatGPT's Sora video-generation model creates a personalised Santa video message.
Some users tried the feature and shared their experience. The video features Santa Claus delivering a playful verdict on users' behaviour, based on their past interactions with ChatGPT. The user might receive praise and a thoughtful gift or a humorous "naughty" label.
The feature is reportedly available on both Free and Plus user accounts, with Plus subscribers possibly having higher usage limits.
Send the 🎁 emoji to ChatGPT 🎄
— shubham vedi (@shub_vedi) December 21, 2025
It triggers a hidden app called “Connector OpenAI Santa” that uses Sora to turn your selfie into a personalized holiday video 🤯
No prompt. Just the emoji.
AI surprises are getting wild. https://t.co/thqlRAroFS pic.twitter.com/Iy2DWJ5caa
ChatGPT Santa gave AI Marina audio equipment, which is kind of perfect (and slightly creepy) because I do want a new mic
— Marina (@marinadgal) December 21, 2025
But why did OpenAI really add this Christmas 🎁 surprise for users? pic.twitter.com/c4DgnLV6uC
GPT-5.2
Recently, OpenAI launched its GPT-5.2 artificial intelligence model. It came after Altman reportedly issued an internal "code red" in early December, redirecting teams to accelerate development in response to Google's Gemini 3 and put a hold on non-core projects. In a statement, the company said that GPT-5.2 comes with improvements in general intelligence, coding and long-context understanding.
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