Asking ChatGPT if a seahorse emoji exists leads to weird results

https://xcancel.com/arm1st1ce/status/1964327067173958021

by mudkipdev • 11 months ago

13 5 11 months ago

throw310822• 11 months ago

Interesting! Claude responds similarly (unicode icons are not visible in hn):

  "Yes, there is a seahorse emoji! It's Wait, I apologize - that's actually an octopus. The seahorse emoji is Actually, let me correct myself again - that's a unicorn. I don't believe there is a dedicated seahorse emoji in the standard Unicode emoji set. The closest ocean-related emojis would be things like  (tropical fish),  (blowfish), or  (shark), but no specific seahorse emoji exists."

Cermank• 11 months ago

Thats so interesting.

Grok has a conspiracy theory for this one. 'No, a seahorse emoji does not exist in the official Unicode standard. Many people seem to recall one (often described as a yellow or orange left-facing design), but this appears to be a Mandela effect—a collective false memory—with no evidence it ever officially existed. Social media discussions and videos often highlight this misconception, sometimes showing fabricated images that mimic Apple or other platform styles. Instead, people commonly represent seahorses using combinations like (horse and water wave) or related aquatic emojis such as or .'

Fade_Dance• 11 months ago

Grok probably pulled "Mandela effect" from the extensive reddit discussions on the topic.

This thread from 11 months ago discusses AI admitting to "falling for the mandela effect.": https://old.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/1g08o8u/seah...

And this thread from 3 years ago goes deeper into the rabbit hole: https://old.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/qbvbrm/anyon...

Has anyone seen World on a Wire, about living in a false reality where memories are erased to preserve the simulation? Getting a similar feeling here!

My tentative conclusion is that there must be a seahorse icon in another older app or character set that isn't unicode, and that's what people are remembering, since some of the digging into old iPhone versions seems fairly convincing.

That, or we are living in a simulation and this seahorse realization is about to imminently propagate into something far bigger...

hdksveoehe• 11 months ago

chatgpt linked to this site

nowittyusername• 10 months ago

My recollection is different, its of a half horse half fish. Horse part facing to the left as if its standing on hind legs, horse is brown. Bottom half is blue fish tail.

Asking ChatGPT if a seahorse emoji exists leads to weird results

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