What's trending in AI right now, from the app charts to the community feeds. Real links, our take.
The 80s portrait trend is still spreading
If your social feeds are filling up with retro-looking portraits, feathered hair and all, that is AI at work. People are uploading selfies to ChatGPT and Gemini and asking for a 1980s studio portrait, and the results are convincing enough to keep the trend alive week after week. India TV News covers the latest wave, and Explainx.ai has a good explanation of why this keeps resurfacing: the 1980s has a very specific visual language that AI models handle well, newer models are better at keeping your face recognizable while restyling everything else, and the before/after format is naturally shareable. It is one of those trends that keeps getting rediscovered.
People are using ChatGPT to reverse-engineer viral videos
Content creators have been spreading a tip this week: download a viral Reel, upload it to ChatGPT, and ask the model to explain what made it work. Creators Newsletter has a walkthrough showing how you can ask about the hook, the pacing, and the B-roll choices, then ask ChatGPT to help adapt the lessons for your own niche. This is just a use case that has been quietly spreading as video upload in ChatGPT has become more routine. It is gaining traction now because a few posts showing the results have gone wide on Reddit.
OpenAI's live voice model is now open to developers
On September 10, OpenAI made GPT-Live-1 available through the API for the first time. GIGAZINE covers the release: this is the same full-duplex voice model already inside ChatGPT, meaning it listens and speaks at the same time rather than waiting for you to finish a sentence before responding. The front-end voice layer costs $0.05 per minute, with separate charges for the backend model. Third-party apps will now be able to build on it, so more polished voice-based AI experiences outside of ChatGPT are likely coming soon.
More people are finding out ChatGPT uses their old chats
A Reddit thread titled "PSA: ChatGPT is using chats you forgot about to shape new answers" has been circulating widely, and the concern is real. Digital Applied breaks down how it works: since June, ChatGPT draws on past conversations, connected Gmail, and uploaded files to personalize its responses, and crucially, deleting a conversation does not delete the memories synthesized from it. You have to clear those separately in Settings under Personalization. This is on by default across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans, which is why a lot of people are only discovering it now.
An AI assistant built around sustainability is climbing the charts
EcoGPT jumped seven spots in the productivity charts this week, which is worth a look. The company's about page explains what it is: a chatbot that runs on renewable energy, uses smaller open-source models instead of large GPU clusters, and plants a tree for every 200 prompts. It also has a zero-data-retention policy, meaning your conversations are not used to train future models. The chart climb reflects growing interest in AI tools that come from outside the major labs, and EcoGPT is currently one of the more visible options for people looking for that.