Ghostface AI Trend: Copy-Paste Prompt for the Y2K Phone Call Photo

What the Ghostface AI trend is

It is a fake film still. You lie on shiny pink satin sheets in a late-90s bedroom, talking on a big corded phone, and in the dim hallway behind you stands Ghostface, the masked killer from the Scream films. The Tab's how-to from September 29, 2025 used Gemini: upload a selfie, paste a long prompt, send. Its prompt also asks for gold jewelry, brown lip gloss and long black hair in loose curls with pink clips, in a lamp-lit room at night.

Know Your Meme traces the earliest known example to an Instagram post on September 25, 2025. A TikTok video posted the next day strung several trend images together and passed 2.7 million views in four days, and the trend was typically set to a remix of Le Tigre's "Deceptacon". Kapwing's trend page pitched it as Halloween fun tied to the release of Scream 7. A year on, PerfectCorp's guide, dated September 18, 2026, still calls it trending in late September 2026.

Strip away the film and five parts make a photo read as this trend:

• A late-90s bedroom: shiny satin sheets, a dim lamp, posters on the wall.
• A big 90s corded phone held to your ear.
• You, relaxed and daydreaming on the call, with no idea what is behind you.
• A masked figure in a black hooded robe, standing still in a dark doorway.
• Heavy grain, like a snapshot from a 90s photo album.

The one-tap version: Y2K Slasher Phone Call

Y2K Slasher Phone Call is our take on the trend. Upload one selfie and it returns a grainy 90s flash photo in 3:4: you lying on satin sheets, chatting on a see-through corded phone among posters and a lava lamp, with a figure in a black hooded robe waiting in the dark doorway. We don't draw the film's mask. The figure wears a generic white costume mask, and there is no blood and no weapon. There are two moods: Pink bedroom (warm flash, pink satin, fairy lights) and Blue hour (the same room in cold blue twilight with one warm lamp). A run costs 1 photo, and it works on the Free plan: new accounts get 3 photos once, with a watermark.

Input

Result

Input

Result

Both runs kept the face. The first woman kept her freckles, brown eyes and dark shoulder-length hair; the template added two small pink clips. The second kept her blue eyes, freckles and straight light brown hair. Two things changed on her that we didn't ask for: her closed-mouth smile became a wide grin, and a ring appeared on her finger. In the blue run the hallway behind the figure came out warm-lit instead of black, so the figure is easier to see and less eerie. The sample man's two runs kept his face too and dressed him in an open plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, as the template is meant to. The template asks for a blank oval mask with no mouth; in all nine of our runs it drew a plain white full-face mask with a faint nose and closed lips, a costume-shop mask rather than the film's.

Our first runs were worse. The first pink run came back with white sheets, posters covered in garbled letters and faces, and a corded handset with an antenna sticking out of it. Another run pulled the second woman's hair up into a claw clip, which weakened the likeness. The template now asks for pink bedding, image-only prints and your own hair length and part. Pink walls and fairy lights still don't come every time: our last pink run had white walls, though the satin stayed pink.

1. 1

   Step 1: Take a close selfie

   Face the camera in daylight, eyes open, no sunglasses. The scene puts your face near the lens and large in the frame, so every detail it keeps comes from this photo.

2. 2

   Step 2: Pick a mood

   Pink bedroom for the classic trend look, Blue hour for a colder, darker shot.

3. 3

   Step 3: Run it and check

   One run costs 1 photo. Look at the hands, the face and the posters before you post, and run it again if something is off.

4. 4

   Step 4: Make a montage

   The early viral TikToks strung several images together. Run both moods, or one mood twice, to get a few frames of the same scene.

The DIY prompt for Gemini or ChatGPT

To type it yourself, use a chat app that edits photos. In the Gemini app you upload a photo and ask Gemini to edit it, as Google's help page describes; the same page says image editing isn't available to users under 18. Attach one close selfie, then paste this:

Use my attached selfie as the person. Keep my face, hair and skin tone exactly as they are. Grainy late-90s flash photo, vertical 3:4: I lie on pink satin sheets, chatting on a see-through corded phone, smiling and making direct eye contact with the camera. Fairy lights, a lava lamp, abstract posters. Behind me, a still figure in a black hooded robe and a plain white mask stands in the dark doorway. No weapons, no blood, no text.

• The face sentences come first. PerfectCorp found that Gemini sometimes returns a random person instead of the one in the selfie.
• "A plain white mask" replaces the character's name. The prompt The Tab printed names the killer and the film; PerfectCorp found Gemini refused more often than its own YouCam tools and warns it can answer that it can't make the image because of copyright.
• "Direct eye contact with the camera" keeps your face toward the lens. Our template's first pink runs looked off to the side, even after one request to look into the lens, until the template asked for direct eye contact.
• "Abstract posters" and "no text" go together: posters invite letters, and in our runs the letters came out garbled.

Use my attached selfie as the person. Keep my face, hair and skin tone exactly as they are. Grainy late-90s flash photo, vertical 3:4: I lie on lilac satin sheets in a cold blue twilight bedroom, on a corded phone, smiling and making direct eye contact with the camera. One warm bedside lamp. Behind me, a still figure in a black hooded robe and a plain white mask stands in the dark doorway. No weapons, no blood, no text.

We have not run either prompt inside Gemini or ChatGPT; the photos on this page come from our template, which runs its own longer prompt. Expect the room and the mask to change from run to run, and check the face before you post.

What to avoid

• Weapons and blood. The trend photos work because nothing has happened yet. A knife turns it into a violent picture; our template leaves both out.
• Real people who didn't agree. Use your own selfie, or a friend's with their OK, and don't put a celebrity, an ex or a coworker in the scene. Google's Gemini help page asks users not to violate others' copyright or privacy rights.
• Kids' photos. This is a grown-up horror look, and Outwow takes a child's photo only in its templates made for kids. For a child's Halloween photo, Kid's Halloween Costume dresses them as a pumpkin, a friendly ghost or a dinosaur, with no mask over the face.
• The film's mask and name on anything you sell. We draw a generic white mask and keep the name off the image; for a business post, do the same. On Outwow, commercial use comes with the Premium and Ultra plans.
• Readable posters and date stamps. Letters on the posters came out garbled in our early runs, so ask for image-only prints.

Outwow deletes uploaded photos within 24 hours. What to check in any app before you upload your face is in our guide to AI photo app safety.

Template or prompt: what differs

More Halloween looks from one selfie

AI Halloween Costume Try-On puts you in a witch, Y2K vampire or zombie bride costume at a flash-lit house party, on a candlelit porch or in a foggy forest. 90s Film Photo gives a photo you already have the faded warm color, light grain, direct flash and orange date of a 90s point-and-shoot. The whole set is in the Halloween collection, and our AI Halloween photo ideas show more looks with real results.