‘So accurate it’s not funny’: The ChatGPT Scan meme imagines a grim future

The ChatGPT Scan meme consists of a stock photo of someone getting an MRI while the doctor loads up the generative AI program. This is a new version of an older meme that typically shows the physician watching TV, playing a video game, or doing something else distracting when he should be working.

The latest version makes a grim joke about excessive reliance on ChatGPT and similar programs to get important work done instead of doing things the hard way.

Meme basics:

• Meme Creator: Unclear, potentially @negusflex
• Meme Type: Exploitable image
• First Appearance: Jan. 26, 2025
• Origin Source: Instagram
• Used to Convey: Criticism of generative AI use

What is the ChatGPT Scan meme?

The new AI meme shows a photo of a medical professional in scrubs sitting at a computer in the foreground and a patient viewed through a glass window lying on an MRI machine. The patient asks, "Doc, how does it look?" and the doctor replies, "Yeah one second bro." The ChatGPT logo dominates his screen.

The meme is likely in response to increased reliance on AI to perform tasks like writing a college essay or even allegedly drafting presidential executive orders. Programs like ChatGPT have become such a tempting shortcut that people are making slightly concerning jokes about doctors using it to interpret their MRI scans.

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Origins and spread

A related meme making jokes about doctors who are distracted from their jobs by popular media emerged in 2023. One of the earliest examples we found is on Instagram, posted by @thehumourguy on April 15, 2023. In this version, the doctor has his browser opened to the Instagram user's account and says, "Lmao hold on fam @thehumourguy just posted."

Jokesters often caption this precursor to the ChatGPT scan meme with "lol hold on fam" or something similar rather than "yeah one second bro." Video versions of the meme later spread to TikTok.

An early instance of the ChatGPT meme is also on Instagram, posted by @negusflex on Jan. 26, 2025. From there, it spread to Reddit, where it got hundreds of upvotes on the forum r/indianmedschool with the title, "Radiology future according to this sub."

With generative AI availability spreading across the globe, the meme quickly gained steam across multiple languages. There's already a Spanish version.

ChatGPT use has teachers worried

Since the day that ChatGPT was introduced to the world among other generative AI tools, people have expressed concern about its impacts on how people will work and learn. These programs can produce entire essays with a simple prompt, eliminating the need for a student to research, develop their writing skills, or even think critically.

Despite tools that allow instructors to detect AI use in student work and penalties for using it, the problem has persisted. In Sept. 2024, one former professor who taught academic writing to PhD students wrote an article for TIME about how she decided to quit teaching because no matter what she said or did, they would not stop using ChatGPT.

"I scaffolded assignments," she wrote. "I researched ways to incorporate generative AI in my lesson plans, and I designed activities to draw attention to its limitations. I reminded students that ChatGPT may alter the meaning of a text when prompted to revise, that it can yield biased and inaccurate information, that it does not generate stylistically strong writing and, for those grade-oriented students, that it does not result in A-level work."

"It did not matter. The students still used it."

Even full-fledged scientific researchers have been caught using ChatGPT to write their study articles, such as one published in and then removed from Physica Scripta in 2023. The problem has become so widespread that better scientists are conducting studies on its effect on behavior and cognition.

ChatGPT scan meme examples

Related memes:

• The ‘Hello I am A Wildlife Photographer and This Is A Picture I Captured Today❤️’ meme pokes fun at AI-generated slop
• ‘Will Smith eating spaghetti’ is the first AI benchmark meme
• What’s up with the Apple Dog meme and those AI TikToks?
• The ‘first good AI joke’ joke is also a brilliant ethical solution to the trolley problem

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