I asked ChatGPT to turn me into a 1990s action figure — and it remembered things I'd forgotten
SMRTR summary
A Game Boy. A Goosebumps book. A soccer ball. ChatGPT didn't just generate a retro action figure, it remembered who its user actually was.
Writer Eric Hal Schwartz asked ChatGPT to create two collectible action figures of himself, one as a seven-year-old in 1993, and one as a 40-year-old today. The AI chose accessories without being prompted, pulling details from past conversations to fill the blister packaging.
The childhood figure came loaded with era-perfect nostalgia. The adult version got a smartphone, a stroller, and a black-and-gold chihuahua, packaged like a luxury collector's item.
What began as a playful experiment quietly became something more unsettling. The accessories weren't chosen from a photo. They were drawn from memory, specifically, the AI's memory of who this person is across dozens of conversations.
As Schwartz put it, it was "a toy built not from a photograph, but from memory." That's a strange thing to see packaged up in plastic.
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