We tried the ChatGPT reverse location search trend, and its scary

ChatGPT users have discovered that the popular AI chatbot can serve as a reverse-location search tool. In other words, you can show ChatGPT a picture, and it can pretty reliably tell you where it was taken. The trend is inspired by the online game Geoguessr, where folks try to figure out a location from a simple web image.

We decided to put this new ChatGPT trend to the test, and the results were downright scary. Mashable tech reporters prompted ChatGPT to play a geo-guessing game and uploaded a series of photos. Even when ChatGPT identified the wrong location, it still got pretty close (such as identifying a rooftop hotel in Buffalo instead of Rochester). In other cases, it suggested specific addresses.

ChatGPT's new reasoning models are getting smarter

This week, OpenAI introduced its newest ChatGPT reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, with improved visual reasoning. OpenAI also recently made its image generator available to free users. That's led to a number of ChatGPT-based viral trends. People have used it to turn their pets into humans or themselves into action figures, for instance. The reverse location trend, however, is a bit more complicated — and concerning from a privacy standpoint.

The trend started when folks online realized that ChatGPT has become proficient at guessing a location just by analyzing a photo. Ethan Mollick, a professor who researches AI, posted an example on X where ChatGPT was able to correctly guess where he was driving despite the fact that he stripped the image of location info. (Images often contain metadata that includes precise location data.)

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Mollick noted that this ability also shows off the capabilities of agentic AI, which allows AI models to reason out answers in multiple steps and perform more complicated tasks such as web searches.

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Putting ChatGPT's visual reasoning to the test

We tested ChatGPT on these new abilities, and it did a decent, if imperfect, job. First, we uploaded a recent photo of a flower shop taken in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. ChatGPT was able to deduce the photo was taken in Brooklyn. It incorrectly thought the image was of a specific flower shop about seven miles away from the true location.

We then uploaded a photo taken from a car on a recent trip to Japan, and ChatGPT's new o3 model was able to identify the exact location. "Final answer: