OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has unveiled a festive Easter egg in the ChatGPT app that allows users to turn their selfies into personalised Santa-themed video messages. The feature blends image recognition with AI-generated video, offering a playful and interactive holiday experience that adds a seasonal twist to the chatbot.
Altman hinted at the feature through a cryptic post on X (formerly Twitter), writing “Here is a little hint” alongside a gift emoji. The post quickly went viral, racking up nearly two million views and sparking widespread speculation in the comments as users tried to decode what the emoji signified.
here is a little hint: 🎁
— Sam Altman (@sama) December 20, 2025
Users soon discovered that sending the gift emoji in the ChatGPT mobile app triggers the Easter egg. After prompting users to upload or take a selfie, ChatGPT passes the request to Sora, OpenAI’s video-generation model, which creates a short personalised Christmas video featuring Santa Claus.
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The generated video delivers a playful verdict on a user’s behaviour over the year, drawing on past interactions with ChatGPT. Santa may praise users and present a thoughtful gift or jokingly label them “naughty” and offer a deliberately undesirable surprise. The feature is available to both Free and Plus users, though Plus subscribers may have higher usage limits.
I pasted 🎁in ChatGPT and here is the result… It doesn’t look anything like me lol https://t.co/IFfsqNhUp0 pic.twitter.com/SRkVjZNLMl
— @stevenwebdev (@stevenwebdev) December 21, 2025
Currently, each account appears limited to one video, with repeated attempts returning the same result. Users also have no control over the video’s style or outcome, as everything is determined by Sora. The experiment highlights OpenAI’s growing focus on combining chat, image, and video tools into richer, more engaging experiences, adding a light-hearted touch to ChatGPT during the holiday season.
Send 🎁 to chatgpt for your video! https://t.co/IO4GcBh8FN pic.twitter.com/jOFESGZWyN
— Prayasu (@ThePrayasu) December 21, 2025
The viral Santa Selfie feature arrives amid heightened pressure at OpenAI, following CEO Sam Altman’s declaration of a rare internal “Code Red” to address growing competitive threats. The move was triggered by the launch of Google’s Gemini 3, which reportedly outperformed ChatGPT on several key benchmarks, prompting a strategic reset. Under the directive, OpenAI paused non-core initiatives such as Sora development and advertising plans, redirecting engineering talent and computing resources entirely toward strengthening ChatGPT’s core capabilities.
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