With the latest ChatGPT trend that turns personal photographs into retro-style portraits inspired by the 1980s taking social media by storm, chances are you have tried it too.However, with the trend’s popularity, a familiar question has cropped up: How safe is it to upload a personal photograph — especially one showing your face — to an AI chatbot?Privacy concerns surrounding AI-generated images are not new.Remember when earlier viral trends, including ChatGPT’s Ghibli-style and AI caricature image generators, prompted cybersecurity and privacy experts to caution users about the amount of personal information they were voluntarily sharing with AI platforms?A concern highlighted by experts is that viral trends may normalise the practice of uploading personal data to AI tools, making users less cautious about sharing sensitive information.There are also privacy risks beyond the AI platform itself. Once an AI-generated image is shared publicly on Instagram, X, Facebook or other social media platforms, it creates another layer of exposure. In other words, privacy concerns do not necessarily end with the initial upload.Similar concerns surfaced during the viral Ghibli-style image trend in April last year. Critics argued that such trends could give OpenAI access to thousands of voluntarily submitted images, including facial data, while users focused on creating and sharing stylised versions of themselves.What ChatGPT said?When asked whether it is safe to upload a personal photograph to create a 1980s-style portrait, ChatGPT described the practice as generally reasonable but noted several privacy considerations.According to ChatGPT:Only upload photos you are comfortable sharing with the service, as a clear facial image is personal information.Avoid uploading photos containing other people unless you are comfortable with their images being processed as well.Ensure photographs do not reveal sensitive information in the background, such as addresses, identity documents or children’s school details.If the image is particularly private, consider using a local or offline image-editing tool instead.Use a cropped portrait rather than the full original photograph where possible.Ultimately, the advice comes down to a simple principle: participating in a fun AI trend does not eliminate the privacy implications of uploading a personal photograph.Users taking part in the viral 1980s trend may therefore want to choose images that reveal as little additional personal information as possible.