India, Dec. 17 -- Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, set off a round of online reactions after sharing an AI-generated image of himself styled as a shirtless firefighter, complete with Christmas lights and a calendar-style pose. The image was not real. It was created using ChatGPT's image-generation tools and posted as part of a thread demonstrating recent updates to the product.

The post drew immediate attention, crossing 1.5 million views within hours. Much of that attention came in the form of trolling rather than praise.

Altman shared the image while explaining how users can now generate custom visuals directly inside ChatGPT. The firefighter photo, styled like a charity calendar feature, appeared intended as a playful example of what t...