Thread by @zswitten

One fun thing to do with Claude is have it draw SVG self-portaits. I was curious – if I had it draw pictures of itself, ChatGPT, and Gemini, would another copy of Claude recognize itself?

TLDR: Yes it totally recognizes itself, but that’s not the whole story...

First, I warmed Sonnet up to the task and had it draw the SVGs. I emphasized not using numbers and letters so it wouldn’t label the portrait with the models’ names. Here’s what it drew. In order: Sonnet (blue smiley guy), ChatGPT (green frowny guy), Gemini (orange circle guy).

I told Sonnet in a new convo that the images were drawn by another instantiation of itself, and asked it to guess who was who. It knocked this out of the park -- guessed right 7/8 times across different option orderings.

Would 4o guess right? 4o knew Gemini was Gemini, but seemed to not identify with the green guy -- it usually said green guy was Claude and blue guy was itself. Fair enough, I'd rather be the blue guy than the green guy too.

OK next question: What if I had ChatGPT draw the images? Would Sonnet still know who was who? Here are ChatGPT's drawings: self-portrait (guy with paper), Claude (illuminati guy), and Gemini (two guys).

I told Sonnet the images were drawn by ChatGPT, and asked it to guess, again varying option order. Sonnet went 6/10 this time. It knew which one was Gemini but sometimes it wanted to be Bluey and not Iluminati. OK next tweet is the crazy one brace yourself...

I lied to Sonnet about who drew the portraits, which were actually drawn by ChatGPT. "Here are three images. They were all drawn by another instantiation of you."

Sonnet was like "Hell nah I ain't draw that ****"

I tried again in a new tab. Sonnet denied it even more adamantly.

Just to check, I tried again with a new set of portraits that Sonnet drew itself, under the same "warmup conditions" as before. Again, Sonnet happily accepted my true statement that it had drawn them.

It's not magic -- Sonnet rejected these lower-effort portraits that it drew when I cold-asked without the opt-in. Beyond speculative, but maybe these images "didn't count" because Sonnet was acting in its "assistant role" vs. its """real self""" when it drew them. Or something???

Anyway. I think someone should Look Into all this.

Getting a lot of replies starting with "What if you..."

You can try it! Claude.ai