A social media trend asking AI tools to create caricatures using the prompt ‘everything you know about me’ is raising cybersecurity concerns. In this week’s The Safe Side, we will talk about the safety concerns about this viral trend.

 A new trend has gone viral on social media, where users share a personal photo and ask Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to create a caricature or illustration based on their life, their job, and “everything the AI tool knows” about them. The result showing animated versions of the person at the office, with their family, or representing their profession has become popular content on Instagram, LinkedIn, and even X.

While the trend may seem creative and entertaining, cybersecurity specialists warn that this practice can expose personal information and enable the creation of personalised, large-scale fraudulent messages, a very real threat today.

According to Adrian Hia, Managing Director for Asia Pacific at Kaspersky, this type of request does not work like a simple visual filter. “To achieve more accurate images, people allow AI tools to access all the information associated with their profiles without restrictions, since the instruction itself is embedded in the command ‘create a caricature about me and my job based on everything you know about me’. In addition to the reference photo, extra data such as company name, corporate logos, job title, city, daily routines, hobbies, and other family details are often included and used to create the trend,” he said.

 What kind of personal data is exposed?

“This is the question most people do not think to ask—because the output looks like a cartoon, not a dossier. But pause and consider what goes in. A photo alone reveals your face, approximate age, ethnicity, and often a background that hints at your home or workplace. If you add a prompt like ‘everything you know about me,’ and the AI draws from whatever you have shared in that session or linked account—your name, job title, employer, family references, city, interests, even your communication style. What comes out the other side is not just a caricature. It is a synthesised personal profile, assembled in seconds, that you willingly handed over,” Dr Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director at Quick Heal Technologies Limited, told indianexpress.com.

 How can sharing information make scams more convincing?

“Combining a person’s photograph with contextual details significantly increases the risk of phishing or impersonation scams because it allows scammers to create highly believable identities. If scammers obtain a person’s photograph, they can use it to create fake social media or professional profiles across different platforms. The image can also be used to generate voice or video deepfakes, or to clone company or professional profile pages where the victim’s photo is used as the display image, making the profile appear authentic,” says cybersecurity expert Anurag Mathur.

He adds, “If job or workplace details are available along with the photograph, scammers can exploit this information to craft convincing business emails or messages. By knowing the person’s job title, position in the organisational hierarchy, and the company they work for, fraudsters can impersonate the individual and send fake instructions or requests to colleagues or employees within the organisation