This week my social media feeds have been full of adorable caricature images of friends and colleagues.

Just like the great “action figure“ trend of 2025, people are uploading their best images to create AI-generated share-worthy pics with a simple prompt:

“Create a caricature of me and my job.”

Easy breezy, I thought this morning. Both ChatGPT and Gemini have stored all kinds of facts about me, my job, my cats and much more. This will be easy.

(Spoiler alert — It took forever! So I “vibe coded” this amazing online prompt wizard to make your caricature creation prompt in seconds.)

Prompt and Prompt Again

Not only did the easy-breezy task with the super-simple prompt take forever to produce acceptable results, the AI tools I tested really made me doubt that they listen at all.

First Try: Superficial and Sloppy Slop

I started with the default version of the Pro levels of both ChatGPT and Gemini.

So ChatGPT sees me as a scientist, and Gemini thinks I think a lot about technology. Neither did anything creative with the image itself, and, most shockingly, neither put anything about the way I make my living (a technology keynote speaker).

A couple of positives: ChatGPT gave me a cute figure and great hair. Gemini gave my Nerd pin a nice sparkle.

Second Try: ChatGPT makes progress; Gemini gets weird

I wrote back: “Really? I’m a professional speaker. I talk about tech tools. I have cats. Is this really how you see me? And is this all you got?”

ChatGPT responded with an apology and a list of my characteristics as well as an outline to improve. Gemini was silent and simply tried again.

Props to ChatGPT for this one. My biggest complaints are the icons on the screen. Google changed “Bard” to Gemini two years ago this week, and DALL-E hasn’t been a separate entity since April 2024. I’m willing to live with the misspelling of “Midjourney.”

But Gemini? Come on. Swirling cats and a presentation from the living room of the original pic. It’s just not trying.

Third Try: “Thinking Mode” didn’t help much

I started new chats for both and changed the AI model to “Thinking Mode” to give them more processing power. I also changed reference pics.

Both of them added more details and nailed the overall nerdiness but took me off the stage.

Try Four: Starting from a different angle

I started another new chat with both platforms with this prompt: Please tell me what you know about me and my job.

ChatGPT gave quite a list, including:

• Grammar preferences
• Signature color
• Books and keynote titles
• Birthday
• Core values
• Session resources I’ve created
• Personal insights such as the way I’ve been feeling about my husband’s cancer fight, how much I try to make my clients happy and my health.
• Cat obsessions

Gemini broke it down into professional and personal as well as shopping interests.

• Tech-centered work
• Travel habits
• Baking obsessions
• Knitting and DIY projects
• Converse hi-tops shoe collection
• New car

Thankfully both of them acknowledged that I am a tech-focused keynote speaker and consultant.

The new images were much better.

I did have to go back and forth a little with ChatGPT on some small details, but overall I think either of these are passable. But I really thought I would get this quality the first time out.

How to Create Your Own AI Caricature

Squeee! You don’t have to go through what I did to get a great caricature because I’ve created an online wizard to output the perfect prompt just for you!

Click here to see the coolest tool I’ve created by my little ole self by using the mind-blowing Canva coding tool.