A researcher joked that working at OpenAI ages you. Now colleagues are posting their before-and-after photos.

Working at OpenAI may look good for your résumé. For your under-eyes? The company's researchers are not so sure.

A tongue-in-cheek joke by Thibault Sottiaux, the engineering lead on OpenAI's Codex, about the AI lab's breakneck pace has sparked a mini before-and-after trend among colleagues — complete with changed hairstyles and a recommendation for eye patches.

"A few weeks at OpenAI feel like years at other companies in terms of how much gets done," Sottiaux wrote in an X post on Thursday. "Crazy how much you can age in a few days."

The post, which has been viewed more than 950,000 times as of Friday morning, followed several days of online jokes about Sottiaux's appearance in an episode of the "Matthew Berman" podcast on Monday.

X users compared the interview footage with his LinkedIn profile photo. One joked that OpenAI had replaced him with "TIBO-3000" — a fictional robot version of Sottiaux — while others teased that he had not slept in months.

Sottiaux did not exactly shut down the meme. On Tuesday, he polled his 525,500 X followers on whether he needed a haircut, with nearly 75% of roughly 54,000 votes opting for "yes."

When another user asked why he looked different, he replied: "Hair grows and can (optionally) be cut."